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Entered, according to Act of Congre&s, in the year 1852, 

By Gboroe p. Putnam, 

Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District 
of New York. 



STEREOTYPED B7 

4^-0 BILLIN & BROTHERS, 

MO. 10 NORTH WILLIAM-8T., N. T. 

JOHN F. TROW, PaiNTKH, 
49 Ann-steeet. 



V* 



MEETING IN THE CITY HALL, SEPTEMBER 25, 1851. 

EISTORIOAL SOCIETY, OCTOBER 7, 1851. 

MEETING IN METROPOLITAN HALL, FEBRUARY ii, 1852. 



gis0ttrse m\ \\t fife \\\\\ §n\m 0f to^er, 

BY WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 
DANIEL WEBSTER, 

PRESIDING AT THE MEETING HELD IN METROPOLITAN HALL ; 

JOHK W. FRANCIS, G. P. R. JAMES, 

GEORGE BANCROFT, FRANCIS L. HAWKS, 

GEORGE W. BETHUNE, SAMUEL OSGOOD. 

%t\\m ixm 



WASHINGTON IRVING, 
WILLIAM C. BRYANT, 
GEORGE W. DOANE, 
JAMES K. PAULDING, 
G. P. R. JAMES, 
GEORGE BANCROFT, 
EDWARD EVERETT, 
CHARLES JARED INGERSOLL, 
JAMES E. DE KAY, 
FRANCIS LIEBER, 
LEWIS CASS, 
RICHARD RUSH, 
HENRY REED, 
JAMES HALL, 
HERMAN MELVILLE, 



WILLIAM H. PRESCOTT, 
RICHARD H. DANA, 
RALPH WALDO EMERSON, 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, 
CHARLES SUMNER, 
HENRY W. LONGFELLOW, 
FRANCIS PARKMAN, 
FRANCIS L. HAWKS, 
ALFRED B. STREET, 
SAMUEL F. B. MORSE, 
WILLIAM GILMORE SIMMS, 
JOHN P. KENNEDY, 
JOHN R. THOMPSON, 
CHARLES G. LELAND, 
JOHN W. FRANCIS. 



prospectus of tf)c Cooper iHonumtnt Association. 



PUBLIC HONOURS TO THE MEMORY OF MR. COOPER, 
3tt tliB Citt[ nf Mm f nrk. 



At a meeting of friends of the late James Fenimore Cooper, 
held in the City Hall, in the city of New York, pursuant to 
notice, on the 25th of September, 1851, Washington IrvinCx 
m the Chair, and Fitz-Greene Halleck and Rufus W. Gris- 
woLD, Secretaries, the following gentlemen were appointed a 
Committee to make the necessary arrangements for a suitable 
demonstration of respect for Mr. Cooper's memory : 

WASHINGTON IRVING, FITZ-GREENE HALLECK, CHARLES F. BRIGGS, 

GULIAN C. VERPLANCK, RUFUS W. GRISWOLD, MAUNSELL B. FIELD, 

JOHN DUER CHARLES KING, PARKE GODWIN, 

JAMES K. PAULDING, GEORGE BANCROFT, JONA. M. WAINWRIGHT, 

JOHN W. FRANCIS, LEWIS GAYLORD CLARK, DONALD G. MTCHELL, 

RICHARD B. KIMBALL, JOHN A. DIX, GEO. P. PUTNAM, 

FRANCIS L. HAWKS, GEORGE P. MORRIS, N. P. WILLIS, 

WILLIAM C. BRYANT, SAMUEL OSGOOD, J. G. COGSWELL, 

WILLIAM W. CAMPBELL, CHARLES ANTHON, J. STARBUCK MAYO. 

At this meeting the following letters were read : 

From Washington Irving. 

SuNNYsiDE, Thursday, Sept. 18, 1851. 
My Dear Sir : — The death of Fenimore Cooper, though anticipated, 
is an event of deep and public concern, and calls for the highest expres- 
sion of public sensibility. To me it comes with something of a shock ; 
for it seems but the other day that I saw him at our common literary 
resort at Putnam's, in full vigour of mind and body, a very " castle of a 
man," and apparently destined to outlive me, who am several years his 
senior. He has left a space in our literature which will not easily be 

supplied I shall not fail to attend the proposed meeting on 

Wednesday next. Very respectfully, your friend and servant. 

WASHINGTON IRVING. 
Rev. Rufus W, Griswold. 



O T H E M E M O R Y O V COOPER. 

From William C. Bryant. 

Rochester, Friday, Sept. 19, 1851. 
My Lear Sir : — I am sorry that the arrangements for my journey to 
the "West are such that I cannot be present at the meeting which is 
about to be held to do honour to the memory of Mr. Cooper, on losing 
whom not only the country, but the civilized world and the age in which 
we live, have lost one of their most illustrious ornaments. It is melan- 
choly to think that it is only until such men are in their graves that full 
justice is done to their merit. I shall be most happy to concur in any 
step which may be taken to express, in a public manner, our respect for 
the character of one to whom we were too sparing of public distinctions 
in his lifetime, and beg that I may be included in the proceedings of the 
occasion as if I were present. J am, very respectfully, yours, 

WM. C. BRYANT. 
Rkv. R. W. Griswold. 

From Bishop Doane. 

Riverside, Tuesday, Sept. 22, 1851. 
J/y Dear Sir : — .... I beg you to say, generally, in your discretion, 
that I yield to no one who will be present, in ray estimate of the distin- 
guished talents and admirable services of Mr. Cooper, or in my readi- 
ness to do the highest honour to his illustrious memory. His name 
must ever find a place among the " household words" of all our hearts ; 
a name as beautiful for its blamelessness of life, as it is eminent for its 
attainments in letters, which has subordinated to the higher interests of 
patriotism and piety, the fervours of fancy and the fascinations of 
romance. Very faithfully, your friend and servant, 

G. W; DOANE. 
Rev. Rufus W. Griswoi.d. 



From James K. Paulding. 

Hyde Park, Sept. 2.S, 1851. 

Jfy Dear Sir: — You will state the reason of my absence, 

at the same time giving assurance of my cordial co-operation 

in any tribute they may offer to the memory of one who occupied so 
high a place among the distinguished authors of the age, and whose 
many estimable qualities merited the sincere regard of all who knew 
^lim. Very respectfully, your obedient servant, 

J. K. PAULDING. 
Rev. Dr. Griswold. 



MEETING AT THE CITY HALL. 9 

From G. P. R. James. 

Stockbridge, Mass., 2Sd Sept., 1851. 
Dear Doctor Griswold : — I regret extremely that it will not be in 
my power to be present at the meeting to testify respect for the memory 
of Mr. Cooper. I grieve sincerely that so eminent a man is lost to the 
country and the world ; and though unacquainted with him personally, 
I need hardly tell you how highly his abilities as an author, and his 
character, were appreciated by Yours faithfully, 

G. P. R. JAMES. 

From Mr. Bancroft. 
Newport, R. I., Thursday, Sept. 18, 1851. 

3fy Dear Sir : — I heartily sympathize with the design of a public 
tribute to the genius, manly character, and great career of the illustri- 
ous man whose loss we deplore. Others have combined very high merit 
as authors, with professional pursuits. Mr. Cooper was, of those who 
have gone from among us, the first to devote himself exclusively to let- 
ters. We must admire the noble courage with which he entered on a 
course which none before him had tried ; the glory which he justly won 
was reflected on his country, of whose literary independence he was the 
pioneer, and deserves the grateful recognition of all wlio survive him. 

By the time proposed for the meeting, I fear I shall not be able to 
return to New York ; but you may use my name in any manner that 
shall strongly express my delight in the writings of our departed friend, 
ray thorough respect for his many virtues, and my sense of that surpass- 
ing ability which has made his own name and the names of the crea- 
tions of his fancy, household words throughout the civilized world. 
I remain, dear sir, very truly yours, 

GEORGE BANCROFT. 
Rev. R. "W. Griswold. 

From Mr. Everett. 

Cambridge, Sept. 23, 1851. 

Dear Sir : — I received, this afternoon, your favour of the I'Zth, in- 
viting me to attend and participate in the meeting to be held in your 
City Hall, for the purpose of doing honour to the memory of the late 
Mr. Fenimore Cooper. 

I sincerely regret that I cannot be with you. Tlie state of the 
weather puts it out of my power to make the journey. The object of 
the meeting has my entire sympathy. The works of Mr. Cooper have 
adorned and elevated our literature. There is nothing more piu-ely 



10 THE MEMORY OF COOPER. 

American, in the highest sense of the word, than several of them. In 
his dcpartinent he is facile princeps. He -wrote too much to write 
every thing equally well ; but his abundance flowed out of a full, origi- 
nal mind, and his rapidity and variety bespoke a resolute and manly 
consciousness of power. If among his works tliere are some which, 
had he been longer spared to us, he would himself, on reconsideration, 
have desired to recall, there are many more wliich the latest posterity 
" will not willingly let die." 

With much about him that was intensely national, we have but one 
other writer (Mr. Irving) as widely known abroad. Many of Cooper's 
novels were not only read at every fireside in England, but were trans- 
lated into every language of the European continent. 

He owed a part of his inspiration to the magnificent nature which 
surrounded him ; to the lakes, and forests, and Indian traditions, and 
border-life of your great state. It would have been as difficult to 
create Leatherstocking any where out of New York, or some state 
closely resembling it, as to create Don Quixote out of Spain. To have 
trained and possessed Fenimore Cooper will be — is alre.ady — with jus- 
tice, one of your greatest boasts. But we cannot let you monopolize 
the care of his memory. We have all rejoiced in his genius ; we have 
all felt the fascination of his pen ; we all deplore his loss. You must 
allow lis all to join you in doing honour to the name of our great Amer- 
ican novelist. I remain dear sir, with great respect, 

Very truly yours, 

EDWARD EVERETT. 
Rev. Rufus W. Griswold. 

From Charles Jared Ingersoll. 

FoNTHiLL, Philadelphia, &jo<. oOlh, 1851. 

Dear Sir : — Your favour, inviting me to a meeting of the friends of 
Fenimore Cooper, did not reach me till this morning, owing probably 
to an in-egularity of the post-office. Otherwise I should have tried to 
attend the proposed meeting, not only as a friend of Mr. Cooper, but as 
one among those of his countrymen who consider his memory a national 
trust for honoured preservation. 

In my opinion of Fenimore Cooper as a novelist he is entitled to one 
merit to which few if any one of his contemporary European romance 
writers can lay claim, to wit, originality. Leatherstocking is an origi- 
nal character, and entirely American, which is probably one of the 
reasons why Cooper was more appreciated in Continental Europe than 
even Scott, whose magnificent fancy embellished every thing, but whose 



MEETING AT THE CITY HALL. 11 

genius, I think, originated nothing. And then, in my estimate of Mr. 
Cooper's superior merits, was manly independence — a rare American 
virtue. For the less free Englishman or Frenchman, politically, there 
was a freeness in the expression as well as adoption of his own views 
of men and things. And a third kindred merit of Cooper was high- 
minded and gentlemanly abstinence from self-applause. No distin- 
guished or applauded man ever was less apt to talk of himself and his 
performances. Unlike too many modern poets, novelists, and other 
writers, apt to become debauchees, drunkards, blackguards and the like, 
(as if, as some think, genius and vice go together,) Mr. Cooper was a 
gentleman remarkable for good plain sense, correct deportment, striking 
probity and propriety, and withal unostentatiously devout. Not mean- 
ing to disparage any one in order by odious comparisons to extol him, 
I deem his Naval History a more valuable and enduring historical work 
than many others, both English and American, of contemporaneous 
publication and much wider dissemination. In short, if the gentlemen 
whose names I have seen in the public journals with yours, proposing 
some concentrated eulogium, should determine to appoint a suitable 
person, with time to prepare it, I believe that Fenimore Cooper may be 
made the subject of illustration in very many and most striking lights, 
justly reflecting him, and with excellent influence on his country. 

I do not recollect, from what I read lately in the newspapers, precise- 
1}' what you and the other gentlemen associated with you in this pro- 
ceeding propose to do, or whether any thing is to take place. But if 
so, whatever and wherever it may be, I beg you to use this answer to 
your invitation, and any services I can render, as cordial contributions, 
which I shall be proud and happy to make. 

I am, very respectfully, your humble servant, 

C. J. INGERSOLL. 

Rev. Rufus W. Geiswold. 

Letters of similar import were read from George Tick 
NOR, William H. Prescott, John Neal, William Gilmore 
SiMMS, William Ware, and other cmineut literary men, 
and the meeting was attended by Dr. Francis Lieber, 
Henry C. Carey, and other persons of distinction from dif- 
ferent parts of the country. 

The committee, in the next two months, held at the Astor 
House frequent meetings, at one of which Mr. Greenough, 



12 THE MEMORY OF COOPER. 

the eminent sculptor, was so obliging as to furnish much inter- 
estmg and serviceable information and suggestion respecting 
monuments, in answer to the committee's mquiries. On one 
of these occasions the following letter was read from Wash- 
ington Irving : 

SUNNYSIDE, Oct. \bth, 1851. 

My Dear Sir : — My occupations in the country prevent my attend- 
ance in town at the meetings of the committee, but I am anxious to 
know what is domg. I signified at our first meeting what 1 thought the 
best monument to the memory of Mr. Cooper — a statue. It is the sim- 
plest, purest, and most satisfactory — perpetuating the likeness of the per- 
son. I understand there is an excellent bust of Mr. Cooper extant, made 
•when he was in Italy. He was tliere in his prime ; and it might furnish 
the model for a noble statue. Judge Duer suggested that his monument 
should be placed at W.ashington, j^erhaps in the Smithsonian Institute. 
I would rather for New York, as he belonged to this state, and the 
scenes of several of his best works were laid in it. Besides, the seat of 
government may be changed, and then Washington would lose its im- 
portance ; whereas New York must always be a great and growing 
motrcipolis — tlie place of arrival and departure for this part of the 
world — the great resort of strangers from abroad, and of our own peo- 
ple from all parts of the Union. One of our beautiful squares would 
be a fine situation for a statue. However, I am perhaps a little too 
local in my notions on this matter. Cooper emphatically belongs to 
the nation, and his monument should be placed where it would be most 
in public view. Judge Duer's idea therefore may be the best. There 
will be a question of what material the statue (if a statue is determined 
on) should be made. White marble is the most beautiful, but how 
would it stand our climate in the open air ? Bronze stands all weathers 
and all climates, but does not give so clearly the expression of the 
countenance, when regarded from a little distance. 

These are all suggestions scrawled in haste, which I should have 
made if able to attend the meeting of the committee. I wish you 
would drop me a line to let me know what is done or doing. 

Yours, very truly, 

WASHINGTON IRVING. 
Rev. RtjFUs Guiswold. 



PROCEEDINGS OF THE HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 13 

The action of the committee was deferred several weeks 
in consequence of the absence of Mr, Bryant, of whom it was 
from the beginning intended to request the delivery of a dis- 
course on Mr. Cooper, and Avho was then on a tour through 
the Western states ; but on his return to the city it was at once 
determined that the public proceedings, which were in con- 
templation, should be held in Metropolitan Hall on the 24th 
of December. Mr, Webster very readily consented to pre- 
side on the occasion, and there was a prospect of such a result 
as should most perfectly gratify the friends of the illustrious 
deceased, and vindicate the popular appreciation of eminent 
moral and intellectual qualities ; but the arrival of Louis 
Kossuth in New York not only engrossed in an astonishing 
degree the general feeling and attention, but his prospective 
visit to the seat of Government rendered it impossible for the 
Secretary of State to be absent at that period ; and the com- 
mittee, therefore, with perfect unanimity, decided to defer the 
proposed commemorative proceedmgs, until such a combination 
( )f favouring circumstances as was deemed necessary should 
warrant the appointment of another day. 

In the meanwhile, at the meeting of the JVeio York His- 
torical Society^ on the evening of Tuesday, the 7th of October, 
the Hon, Luther Bradish m the chair, after the transaction 
of the regular business, the following resolutions were moved 
by Rev, RuFus W. Griswold : 



Whereas, It has pleased Almighty God to remove from this life our 
illustrious associate and countryman, James Fenimore CoorER, while 
his fame was in its fullness, and his intelligence was still unclouded by 
iige or any infirmity, therefore : 



14 TIIK MEMORY OF COOPER. 

Resolved, That this Society has heard of the deatli of James Feni- 
MORE Cooper with profound regret : 

That it recognizes in him an eminent subject and a masterly illus- 
trator of our history : 

That, in his contributions to our literature, he displayed eminent 
genius and a truly national spirit : 

That, in his personal character, he was honourable, brave, sincere, and 
generous, as respectable for unaffected virtue, as he was distinguished 
for great capacities : 

That this Society, appreciating the loss which, however heavily it 
has fallen ujjon this country and the literary world, has fallen most 
heavily upon his family, instructs its officers to convey to his family, 
assurances of respectful sympathy and condolence. 

Mr. George Bancroft having seconded these resolutions, 
Dr. John W. Francis said : — 1 am rejoiced at the pre- 
sentation of these resolutions to the Society. Among the 
many great literary men whom our country has produced, 
there were none greater than Mr. Cooper. I knew him for a 
period of thirty years, and during all that time I never knew 
any thing of his character that was not in the highest degree 
praiseworthy. He was a man of great decision of character, 
and a fair expositor of his o-\\ai thoughts on every occasion — a 
thorough American, for I never knew a man who was more 
entirely so in heart and principle. He was able, with his vast 
knowledge, and a powerful physical structure, to complete 
whatever he attempted. Men might dissent from his .opinions, 
but no one ever successfully impugned his facts. He had 
studied the history of this country with a large philosophy, 
and understood our people and their character better than any 
other A\Titer of the age. He was not only perfectly acquainted 
with our general history, but he was also conversant with 
that of every state, county, village, lake, and river of the 
coinitry. 



PROCEEDINGS OF THE HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 15 

New York, vnth its history, was his delight. Mr. Cooper 
was emphatically a New York man. And with this vast 
knowledge he was no less remarkable for his ability as an 
historian than for his mtrepidity of personal character. 

I will trespass but a moment longer on the time of the So- 
ciety. It was natural to infer, that a life of such integrity, so 
usefully and so honourably passed, as Mr. Cooper's, should be 
closed by a death equally entitled to our notice. With the 
calmness of a Christian philosopher he listened to the details 
of his critical situation. I had every reason to believe from 
my professional interviews with him, and from what I learned 
afterwards from his interesting family, by whom he was sur- 
rounded m his dying hours, that death had no terrors for him ; 
that he was fully prepared to enter into eternity. He had 
for some considerable time previously devoted himself to the 
study of the holy Scriptures — had become an active mem- 
ber of the Protestant Episcopal Church — and had received its 
sacraments, in the admmistrations of his pastor, the Rev. Mr. 
Batten. He had for many years been chosen a delegate of 
the church at Cooperstown, to the Annual Conventions of 
the Protestant Episcopal Church in New York; and on a 
recent occasion, and at an important crisis, he exhibited com- 
mandmg powers in justification of the views he expressed in 
the defence of certain principles in church discipline, and on 
the purity of the ministerial office. In the full fruition of the 
promises of the Christian faith, he died, at his beautiful sylvan 
retreat, on Otsego Lake, at half-past one o'clock, p. m., on 
Sunday, the 14th September, 1851, — one day before the 
completion of his sixty-second year. He expired, calm and 
resigned, in full possession of his intellectual powers. 



16 THE MEMORY OF COOPER. 

I leave to others of our associates to enlarge on the mag- 
nificence of his gifts — his intellectual labours — the benefits he 
has conferred on letters, and on society, and the beneficence 
he exercised to the poor and to the needy. I could not allow 
this opportunity to pass without paying my tribute to the 
merits of this truly great man. 

Mr. Bancroft next addressed the Society. My friend, he 
said, has spoken of the illustrious deceased as an American — 
I say that he was an embodiment of the American feeling, 
and truly illustrated American greatness. We were endeav- 
ouring to hold up our heads before the world, and to claim a 
character and an intellect of our own, when Cooper appeared 
with his powerful genius to support our pretensions. He 
came forth imbued with American life, and feeling, and senti- 
ment. Another like Cooper cannot appear, for he was pe- 
culiarly suited to his time, which was that of an invading 
civilization. The fame and honour which he gained were not 
obtained by obsequious deference to public opinion, but sim- 
ply by his great ability and manly character. Great as he 
was in the department of romantic fiction, he was not less 
deserving of praise in that of history. In Lionel Lincoln he 
has described the battle of Bunker Hill better than it is de- 
scribed in any other work. In his Naval History of the 
United States, he has left us the most admirable composition 
of which any nation could boast on a similar subject. 

Mr. Bancroft proceeded in a masterly analysis of some of 
Mr. Cooper's characters, and ended with an impressive asser- 
tion of the purity of his contributions to our literature, the em- 
inence of his genius, and the dignity of his personal character. 



PROCEEDINGS OF THE HISTORICAL SOCIETY. IT 

My friend, he said, has alluded to the religious senti- 
ments of Mr. Cooper. It has been said, "an undevout 
astronomer is mad," but with as much truth may it be 
said of an irreligious man of letters. Following the subtle 
processes of human learning, busied with the nicest ope- 
rations of the mind, pursuing truth as the great object, 
shall he, in tracing the streams, forget the Fountain of all 
truth ? ]\Ir. Cooper certainly did not do so. 

The Rev. Samuel Osgood said : — 

It must seem presumptuous in me, Mr. President, to try 
to add any thing to the tribute which has been paid to the 
memory of Cooper, by gentlemen so peculiarly qualified, from 
their experience and position, to speak of the man and his ser- 
vices. But all professions have their own point of view, and 
I may be allowed to say a few words upon the relation of our 
great novelist to the historical associations and moral stand- 
ards of our nation. I cannot claim more than a passing ac- 
quaintance ^^■ith the deceased, and it belongs to friends more 
favoured to interpret the asperities and illustrate the ameni- 
ties which are likely to mark the character of a man so decided 
in his make and habit. With his position as an interpreter of 
American history, and a delineator of American character, we 
are in this Society most closely concerned. None in this pres- 
ence, I am sure, will rebuke me for speaking of the novelist as 
among the most important agents of popular education, pow- 
erful either for good or ill. 

Is it not true, sir, that the romance is the prose epic of 
modern society, and that we now look to its pages for the 
most graphic portraitures of men, manners, and events? 



18 THE MEMORY OF COOPER. 

Social and political life is too complex now for the stately 
march of the heroic poem, and this age of print needs not the 
carefully measured verse to make sentences musical to the 
ear, or to save them from being mutilated by circulation. The 
romance is novt^ the chosen form of imaginative literature, and 
its gifted masters are educators of the popular ideal. What 
epic poem of our times begins to compare in influence over 
the common mind with the stories of Scott and Cooper ? Our 
novelist loved most to treat of scenes and characters distinct- 
ively national, and his name stands indelibly A\Titten on our 
fairest lakes and rivers, our grandest seas and mountains, our 
annals of early sacrifice and daring. With some of his criti- 
cisms on society, and some of his views of political and histor 
ical questions, I have personally little sympathy. But, when 
it is asked, ui the impartial standard of critical justice, what 
influence has he exerted over the moral tone of American 
literature, or to what aim has he wielded the fascinating pen 
of romance, there can be but one reply. With him, fency 
has always walked hand in hand with purity, and the ideal of 
true manhood, which is every where most prominent in his 
works, is one of which we may well be proud as a nation and 
as men. 

The element of will, perhaps more strongly than intel- 
lectual analysis, or exquisite sensibility, or high imagination, 
is the distinguished characteristic of his heroes, and in this his 
portraitures are good types of what is strongest in the practi- 
cal American mind. His model man, whether forester, sailor, 
servant, or gentleman, is always bent on bringing some espe- 
cial thing to pass, and the progress from the plan to the 
achievement is described with military or naval exactness. 



PROCEEDINGS OF THE HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 19 

Yet he never overlooks any of the essential traits of a noble 
manhood, and loves to show how much of enterprise, courage, 
compassion, and reverence it combines with practical judgment 
and religious principle. 

It has seemed to me that his stories of the seas and the 
forests are fitted to act more than ever upon the strong hearts 
in training for the new spheres of triumph which are now so 
wonderfully opening upon our people. Who does not wish 
that his noted hero of the backwoods might be kno^vn m every 
log-house along our extending frontier, and teach the rough 
pioneer always to temper daring by humanity? Who can 
ever forget that favourite character, as dear to the reader as 
to the author, — that paladin of the forest, that lion-heart of the 
wilderness, — Leatherstocking — fearless towards man, gentle 
towards woman, — a rough-cast gentleman of as true a heart as 
ever beat rnider the red cross of the crusader. The qualities 
needed in those old times of frontier strife are now needed for 
new emergencies in more peaceful border life, and our future 
depends vastly upon the characters that give edge to the ad- 
vancuig mass of our population now crowding towards the 
Rocky Mountains and the Pacific coast. It is well that this 
story-teller of the forest has been so true to the best traits of 
our nature, and in so many points is a moralist too. As a 
romancer of the sea, Cooper's genius may perhaps be but 
beghmmg to show its influence, as a new age of commercial 
greatness is opening upon our nation. 

Mr. Cooper did not shrink from battle-scenes, and had 
no particular dread of gunpowder, yet his best laurels upon 
the ocean have been won in describmg feats of seamanship 
and traits of manhood that need no bloody conflict for their 



20 T 11 E M E M O R Y O F C O O P E R . 

display, and may be exemplified in fleets as peaceful and 
beneficent as ever spread their sails to the breezes to bear 
kindly products to fi'iendly nations. As we sit here this 
evening, under the influence of the hour, the images of many 
a famous exploit on the water seems to come out from his 
well-remembered pages, and mingle themselves with recent 
scenes of marine achievement. Has nijt the " Water-Witch" 
herself re-appeared of late in our own bay, and laden, not with 
contraband goods, but a freight of stout-hearted gentlemen, 
borne the palm as " Skimmer of the Seas" from all competi- 
tors, in presence of the royalty and nobility of England 1 And 
the old " Ironsides," has not she come back again, more iron- 
ribbed than ever ? — not to fight over the old battles which oui- 
naval chronicler was so tbnd of rehearsing, but under the naini- 
• if the Baltic or (better omen) the Pacific, to win a victory 
n:i(jre honoural)le and ene(.)uraging than ever was carried by 
the thundering broadsides of the noijle old Constitution ! The 
comma uders and pilots so celebrated by the novelist, have 
they not successors indomitable as they ] and just now our 
ship-news brings good tidings of their achievements, as they 
tell us of the Flying Cloud that has made light of the storms 
of the fearful southern cape, and of the return of the adventu- 
rous fleet that has stood so well the hug of the Polar icebergs, 
and shown how nobly a crew may hunt for men on the seas, 
with a Red Rover's daring and a Christian's mercy. 

It is well that the most gifted romancer of the sea is an 
American, and that he is helping us to enact the romance of 
history so soon to be fact. The empire of the waters, which 
in turn has belonged to Tyre, Venice, and England, seems 
waiting to come to America, and no part of the world now so 



PROCEEDINGS OF THE HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 21 

justly claims its possession as that state in which Cooper had 
Ms home. Who does not welcome the promise of the new 
age of powerful commerce and mental blessing 1 Who does 
not feel grateful to any man who gives any good word or 
worlv to the emancipation of the sailor from his worst enemies, 
and to the freedom of the seas from all the violence that stains 
its benignant waters ? While pix)ud of our fleet ships, let us 
not forget elements in their equipment more important than 
oak and iron. In this age of merchandise, let us adorn peace 
with something of the old manhood that took from warfare 
some of its horrors. Did time allow, I might try to illustrate 
the power of an attractive literature in keej)ing alive national 
associations, and moulding national character ; but I am con- 
tent to leave these few tragmentary words w^ith the Society as 
my poor tribute to a writer who charmed many hours of 
my boyhood, and who has won regard anew as the entertain- 
ing and instructive beguiler of some recent days of rural rec- 
reation. May we not sincerely say that he has so used the 
treasures of our national scenery and liistory as to elevate the 
true ideal of true manhood, and quicken the nation's memory 
in many respects auspiciously for the nation's hopes 1 

Dr. Hawks spoke warmly of the religious sentiment in 
Mr. Cooper, as illustrated in his life and in his writings, quoting 
the eulogy of Lord Lyttleton on the poet Thomson : 

Not one iinmoral, one corrupted thought, 
One Ihio wliich, dying, he could wish to blot. 

He contrasted eloquently the pervaduig purity and dignity 
of Mr. Cooper, in a field in which the critics assigned him the 
highest rank that had ever been attained, with the grossness of 



22 THE MEMORY OF COOPER. 

those authors who presumed that the sailor and the pioneer 
were incapable of refinement, and could be aptly pamted only 
in language such as the judicious parent could not willmgly 
submit to his family. 

The evening of the 25th of February havmg finally been 
selected for the public commemorative proceedings in honour 
of Mr. Cooper, the spacious Metropolitan Hall was filled at 
an early hour with an assembly comprising a large representa- 
tion of the intelligence and literary culture of the city. Mr. 
Webster took the chair at half-past seven o'clock. On his 
right hand were seated Mr. Bryant, Mr, Luther Bradish, 
Mr. KiNGSLAND, the Mayor, and Dr. Francis ; on liis left Mr. 
Washington Irving, Chairman of the Committee, Rev. Dr. 
Griswold, Secretary of the Committee, and Mr. Bancroft ; 
and on the stage, besides members of the Committee, were 
Rev. Dr. Henry and Professor Adler, of the University ; 
Mr. G. P. R. James, Chancellor McCoun, Chief Justice Jones, 
Mr. Charles O'Conor, Mr. Ogden Hoffman, Rev. Dr. 
Bethune ; Professor Hackley, of Columbia College ; Mr. 
Curtis, author of " Nile Notes" ; Mr. Young, editor of 
" The Albion ;" Mr. George Ripley, Mr. H. T. Tuckerman, 
Mr. Benjamin F. Butler, Mr. Pell, Dr. Wynne, and many 
other persons of distinction. 

In the speeches pronounced during the evening, and in 
most of the subsequent reports in the journals, the opinion 
was expressed that there had never before been assembled 
for any purpose so large an audience of the most intellec- 
tual and socially emment classes of the city, as was then 
present. 



MR. Webster's speech. 23 

The meeting was called to order by Washington Irving, 
who was received with great enthusiasm. He said : — 

I was sorry to find it reported that I intended to deliver 
an address this evening. I have no talent for public speaking ; 
if I had I would be most happy to do justice to the genius of 
one whose writings entitle him to the love, respect, and admi- 
i-ation of every American. I appear before you, on this occa- 
sion, as Chairman of the Committee of Arrangements, to pre- 
sent to you the Hon. Daniel Webster, who will preside at 
this meeting. 

Mr. Irving here introduced Mr. Webster to the audience, 
amidst loud, enthusiastic, and long-continued applause. 

When quiet was restored, Mr. Webster advanced and said : 

Ladies and Gentlemen : — I deem it an honour to be called 
upon to occupy the chair of this meeting. The object is to 
promote the purpose of erecting an appropriate statue to the 
memory of a distinguished citizen of New York, who has not 
only honoured the state to which he belonged, but also 
the whole country, of which he was a citizen, by his distin- 
guished contributions to American literature. 

Ladies and gentlemen. There are roads to fame of various 
character. Feats in arms acquire renown, military achieve- 
ments take strong hold of the minds of men, and transmit the 
names of their authors to the knowledge of posterity. Political 
life has also its distinction, and those who have proved eminent 
in this career, especially if connected with events greatly affect- 
ing, and favourably affecting, the liberty of their country and 
of mankind, have equal right to be cherished in the grateful 



24 THE MEMORY OF COOPER. 

recollection of succeeding generations. He, in whose honoiu- 
we are now assembled, was never a soldier in arms, nor was 
it his lot to command the attention of listening senates. But 
by the diffusion of his literary productions, by his taste, talent, 
and industry, he had become so much an object of national 
regard, as one to v/hom all classes Avere indebted, for knowl- 
edge, and literary recreation. 

Ladies and gentlemen. Is there any reputation more to be 
desired than that which is established by addressing itself to 
the taste and the cultivation, the morality and the religion, of 
civilized men ? Who can more properly deserve praise than he 
who elevates the literature, enlightens the moral power, and 
strengthens the religious character of the age in which he lives ? 

I should not be here to-night, ladies and gentlemen, to raise 
my feeble voice in honour of the memory of Fenimore Cooper, 
liowever distinguished by genius, talent, education, and the art 
of popular waiting, if in the character of his productions there 
was any thing to be found calculated to undermine the prin- 
ciples of our religious faith, or debauch the morality of the 
country. 

Nothing of genius or talent can atone for an injury of this 
kind to the rising generation of the community. 

As far as I am acquainted with the writmgs of Mr. Cooper, 
they uphold good sentiments, sustain good morals, and main- 
tain just taste ; — and, after saying this, I have next to add, that 
all his writings are truly patriotic and American, throughout 
and throughout. 

It is for these reasons that I deem it an honour to be here, 
on this occasion, to j^erform my humble part, to rear a proper 
statue or monument, to the memory of Fenimore Cooper. I 



MR. AV E B S T E R S SPEECH. 20 

consider him as having contributed largely to the re^Dutation 
of American literature, at home and abroad. 

He is known every where, his writings have been read 
n(.)t only all over this country, but wherever our language 
is read; — and wherever read they have inspired good feel- 
ings and given rational pleasure. He possessed the power 
of amusing, and of enlightening readers among the younger 
classes of the country, without injury to their morals or any 
solicitation of depraved passions. This is his great praise, 
and what is more honourable, or more lil.ely to endure, than 
the fame which is secured by writings of this tendency ? 
and these writings, at tli^ same time, are full of informa- 
tion respecting our country, the early habits of the people 
and our own scenery, and are therefore likely to go down 
with great interest to the generations Avhich are to succeed 
us, and to transmit his delineation of American character, 
in the age before his own, to those which shall come after 
him. There has been no American writer (I suppose) who 
imbued his own mind with a fresher or stronger feeling of the 
habits and mamiers of the early settlers of this country, who 
both understood the scenery and modes of life, on the frontier, 
between civilization and the forest, or who has presented that 
scenery or those modes of life with more variety and effect. 
He has gone ; but he has left a name behind him, which it is 
ours to cherish and to honour ; and so far as marble or bronze 
can perpetuate it, let marble and bronze be employed. But it 
is rather, I think, for the purpose of manifesting our own grati- 
tude for his well-deserving efforts, that we ardently contribute 
by those material febries to the object of transmitting his mem- 
ory to our children. The enduriuG; monuments of Fenimore 



26 THE MEMORY OF COOPER. 

Cooper arc his works. Those, and this meeting, composed, as it 
is, of many of the most distinguished of the men of letters of 
his age and country, with other thousands of his admirmg fel- 
low-citizens, assembled in honour of his memory, constitute 
his fame. He might say with the great Roman orator — 
" Quibus pro tantis rebus, nullum ego a vobis proemium virtutis, 
nullum insigne honoris, nullum monumentum laudis postulo, 
pra^terquam hujus diei memoriam sempiternam. In animis 
ego vestris omnes triumphos meos, omnia ornamenta honoris, 
monumenta glorife, laudis insignia, condi et collocari volo." 
Living in an enlightened age, an age of literature and science, 
of history, poetry and recital, the monument of Mr, Cooper 
exists in the minds of men, and, like other thoughts and senti- 
ments, is transmitted from man to man in the ordinary succes- 
sion of generations. While mind and memory and taste, the 
veneration of religion, the love of country and of good morals, 
continue to prevail, his remembrance will exist in the hearts 
of the people. 

Ladies and gentlemen, my duty on this occasion is very 
simple. It is to signify my sense of the honour conferred on 
me by being called to the chair of this meeting, and to prepare 
you for the proceedings and the remarks which are now to 
succeed. 

Turning to the Secretary of the Committee, (Mr. Fitz- 
Greene Halleck, one of the secretaries, being detained 
from the meetmg,) Mr. Webster then said : 

Dr. Griswold will now proceed to read letters that have 
been addressed to the Committee of friends of Mr. Cooper, 
by gentlemen who are not present. 



CORRESPONDENCE OF THE COMMITTEE. 2i 

The following letters were then read, the assembly receiv- 
ing the names of several of the writers with applause. 

From the late Dr. De Kay. 

SvossET, L. 1, Nov. 6th, 1851. 

Bear Sir : — I perceive by the papers, that a movement is about to 

be made to do lionour to the memory of Fenimore Cooper. 

Under feelings of profound grief for tlie loss of a "warm personal 

friend, and a manly, true-hearted American, I am prompted to inquire 

what form the public demonstration is likely to take on this occasion. 

Should a monument be determined upon, I would cheerfully honour 

your draft for $100 for this purpose. 

I do not wish to appear ostentatious, or prominent in this matter, 

and for that reason called upon you once or twice when in town last, 

to confer with you personally, as those matters appear to me better 

arranged verbally than by writing. 

I am, sir, very respectfully, your obedient servant, 

JAS. E. DE KAY. 
Rev. RuFi's W. Griswold. 

Fro^n Francis Lieber, LL. D. 

Columbia, S. C, Feb., 1852. 

Dear Sir : — I regret very much that I cannot possibly accept your kind 
invitation. Were I within any reasonable distance from New York, I 
should certainly join you, thus to pay my humble though sincere respect 
to a departed fellow- writer. 

Had I any voice in this matter, which I know I have not, I would ex- 
press my hope that the monument be erected in New York and not in 
Washington. In New York his monument will be part and parcel of a 
living organism, as the Raphael is over the altar; in Washington it 
would be like a great picture in a gallery, losing half its value because 
out of place. Washington never was, never will be, and never was in- 
tended to be, a London or Paris. It is but the Frankfort of the United 
States. New York will be, socially, the capital. In New York he lived, 
and in New York the monument would also be a striking proof that 
old difficulties have been buried and long forgotten. Erect it in New 
York and give it to your noble son, Crawford, to execute it — the most 
poetic of our sculptors. Have you seen his plan of the Richmond monu- 
ment ? But pardon me, I am perhaps presumptuous. 

I send you by this mail a trifle. Your very obedient, 

F. LIEBER. 
Rev. Rufus W. Griswold. 



28 T H E M E M O H Y O F C O P E R . 

From the Hon. Lewis Cass. 

Washingtox City, Feb. 20th, 1852. 

Bear Sir : — I Lave received your letter inviting me, in the name of 
flie Committee, to be present at the meeting proposed to be held for 
the purpose of making the necessary arrangements for a suitable dem- 
onstration of respect for the memory of James Fenimore Cooper. 

I cannot be with you upon that occasion, but it will not be for the 
want of respect for his memory as a man and as an author. It would 
be idle for me to speak of his literary merits and his fame. His coun- 
try and the world acknowledge and appreciate his claims, and the pro- 
ductions of his genius will go down to posterity among the noblest 
efforts of the age. I shall necessarily be detained here, but I trust that 
the result of your meeting will be a demonstration worthy of the coun- 
try, and of him, though now lost to us, will ever live in the history of 
human gi'eatness. 

T am, very respectfully, your obedient servant, 

LEWIS CASS. 
Rev. Dr. Griswold. 

From the Hon. Richard Rush. 

Sydenham, near Philadelphia. 
Bear Sir : — Yesterday's mail brought me your most gratifying invi- 
tation, on the part of the Committee "of friends of the late Mr. Cooper," 
to be present at MetroiDolitan Hall, in New York, on the evening of the 
'25th instant, when Mr. Bryant is to pronounce a discourse on the life and 
genius of Mr. Cooper, Mr. Webster presiding on the occasion. These 
names, associated with those of the Committee, Washington Irving being 
at its head, in further conjunction with Mr. Prescott's name, Mr. Eve- 
rett's and Mr. Ticknor's, wliom you also mention as intending to be 
present, hold out inducements of the highest kind to my acceptance of 
such an invitation. In proportion as I feel honoured and gratified by it, 
I hasten to express the sincere regret I experience at being unable to 
accept it, from a previous engagem.ent. Uniting in the opinion ex- 
pressed in your letter that the genius and high character of Mr. Cooper 
make his death a suitable occasion for beginning to honour literary dis- 
tinction in this country, I rejoice to think that a movement to that effect 
comes forward under names so imposing in reputation .and number as 
to afford the best pledges of success. A movement springing from so 
elevated a feeling, and commencing in a case so fitted to awaken public 
sympathy throughout our land, carries with it also my humble but mo.-t 
cordial and mo.st heart-felt co-operation in wishes and hopes. May it 
succeed— monument and all — to the fullest extent of Fenimore Cooper's 



CORRESPONDENCE OF THE COMMITTEE. 29 

merits as an author. And let it lay to heart, that, to whatever height 
our political consideration may tower in tlie world, whatever is, or is to 
be our renown as a nation, its most enduring fame will rest on our great 
names in the field of letters and science. It is their works that will 
survive and continue to shine out, when other vestiges of our greatness 
and glory will have disappeared. 

Fully appreciating the honour of this invitation, and desiring to ten- 
der through you my grateful acknowledgments to the committee, 
I beg you, my dear sir, to believe me, with great respect, 

Your obliged and obedient servant, 

RICHARD RUSH. 
Rev. Rufus W. Griswoi.d. 

From Professor Henry Reed. 

Philadelphia, Feb. 20th, 185'2. 

Dear Sir : — I have the honour to acknowledge the receipt of your 
letter of the 9tli inst., inviting me, on behalf of tlie Committee, to attend 
tlie projjosed meeting of the friends of the late James Feniraore Cooper. 

I was glad to learn that it is in contemplation to erect a statue of 
Mr. Cooper. It will be, if I am not mistaken, the first tribute of the kind 
|)aid in our country to the memory of a man of letters; and it may, 
tlierefore, be hailed as a proof a growing national respect f(jr tlie 
labourers of literature. 

In the younger days of American art, public gratitude was liiin to 
be content with the monumental slab, or obelisk, or column, as memo- 
rials of the distinguished dead ; but now, when it can call to its service 
the genius of a Greenough, or of our other eminent sculptors, the statue 
is the more appropriate as as it is the far more expressive memento. 

It would give me great pleasure to attend the proposed meeting, 
and to be a listener to Mr. Bryant's discourse, but a protracted illness, 
whicli still keeps me a prisoner within doors, puts it out of my power. 
Respectfully, your obedient servant, 

HENRY REED. 

Rev. R. W. GraswoLt). 

From Hon. James Hall. 

CixciNNATi, Ohio, Feb. \Uh, 1852. 
My Lear Sir : — I have had the honour of receiving your letter of the 
9th inst., inviting me to be present at Metropolitan Hall, on the evening of 
the '24th inst., to participate in the proceedings which may then take place, 
to render honour to the memory of James Fenimore Cooper. The great 
distance of my residence, and the pressing nature of my engagements at 



30 THE MEMORY OF COOPER. 

home, alone prevents me from uniting in a work ■which has my entire 
approbation, and enlists my deepest sympathy. The merits of Mr. 
Cooper as a writer, and as a successful pioneer in American literature, 
entitle his memory to the highest honours which his countrymen, and 
especially the writers of his country, can render. I shall not be able to 
be present in person the evening of the 24th, but will be with you in 
feeling and sentiment, and will consider myself honoured in being per- 
mitted to contribute to this excellent design, in any fonn which may be 
efficient and acceptable. I beg the Committee to command my services 
if in any way they can be made useful. Very truly, yours, 

JAMES HALL. 
Rev. Rufus W. Griswold, <fec. 

From Herman Melville. 

PiTTSFiELD, Mass., Feb. 20th, 1852. 

Gentlemen : — I have been honoured by receiving an official invitation 
to attend the Cooper Demonstration, to be held in New York on the 24th 
of this month. My very considerable distance from the city, connected 
with other reasons, will prevent my compliance. But I rejoice that 
there will not be wanting many better, though not more zealous, men 
than myself, to unite on that occasion, in doing honour to a memory so 
veiy dear, not only to American literature, but to the American nation. 

I never had the honour of knowing, or even seeing, Mr. Cooper per- 
sonally ; so that, through my past ignorance of his person, the man, 
though dead, is still as living to me as ever. And this is very much ; 
for his works are among the earliest I can remember, as in my boyhood 
producing a vivid and awakening power upon my mind. 

It always much pained me, that for any reason, in his latter years, his 
fame at home should have apparently received a slight, temporary cloud- 
ing, from some very paltry accidents, incident more or less to the gen- 
eral career of letters. But whatever possible things in Mr. Cooper may 
have seemed to have in some degree provoked the occasional treatment 
he received, it is certain that he possessed not the slightest weaknesses 
but those which are only noticeable as the almost infallible indices of 
pervading greatness. He was a great, robust-souled man, all whose 
merits are not seen, yet fully appreciated. But a grateful posterity will 
take the best care of Fenimore Cooper. 

Assured that your demonstration cannot but prove a noble one, 
equally worthy of its illustrious object and the numerous living celebri- 
ties who will partake in it, I am, very respectfully, yours, 

HERMAN MELVILLE. 

To THE Committee, <tc. 



CORRESPONDENCE OF THE COMMITTEE. 31 

From WilUayn II. Prescott, Esq. 

Boston, Feb. 23c?, 1852. 

My Dear Irving : — I received yesterday, by Dr. Griswold, your 
friendly summons to attend the celebration in honour of Cooper, on 
Wednesday next. It is with much regret that I find myself unable to 
comply with it, as certain family arrangements, which I have explained 
to Dr. Griswold, make it extremely inconvenient to leave town the 
present week. 

I do regret sincerely that I cannot take any share in paying this 
tribute of respect to an illustrious countryman. I have seen it stated 
in some of your journals that his character as a writer was not fully 
ajopreciated here at the North. I believe there is some misapprehension 
in this. But at all events, any criticism on petty defects will now be 
lost in admiration of the results of a life which, for the last thirty years 
or more, has been steadily devoted to letters — results in which every 
American must take an honest pride. For surely no one has succeeded 
like Cooper in the portraiture of American character, taken in its 
broadest sense, of the civilized and of the uncivilized man, or has given 
such glowing and eminently faithful pictures of American scenery. 
His writings are instinct with the spirit of nationality, shown not less 
in those devoted to sober fact than in the sportive inventions of his 
inexhaustible fancy. His merits have been admitted not only wherever 
the English language is spoken, but all over Europe, as every traveller 
knows who has seen the translations of Cooper in the different lan- 
guages of the Continent, holding their place beside those of the great 
masters of English literature. 

There is no one, I am sure, in this country, from the north to the 
south, who does not look on the fame of Cooper as the property of the 
nation, or who would not willingly join in any testimony of respect that 
may be shown to his memory. I, for one, most heartily do so. 

I am glad to learn that the subscriptions to the statue proposed to 
be erected are not confined to your own state. They certainly ought 
not to be so limited. Understanding this from Dr. Griswold, I take 
this occasion to enclose a draft, payable to your order, for a small sum, 
which I pray you to add to the general fund. 

I am glad to learn that your own health has been good of late. Long 
may it be before you, too, join the company of the immortals. 

With my best wishes for your prosperity and happiness, 

I remain, my dear sir, faithfully yours, 

WM. H. PRESCOTT. 
Washington Irving, Esq. 



32 T H E M E M R Y O F C O P E R . 

From Richard H. Dana 

Boston, Feb. 20th, 1852. 

Gentlemen : — The invitation to be present at the meeting appointed 
for tlie evening of the 24th, reached me a few days since. 

I deeply regret that it will not be in my power to make one in the 
number of tliose who will come together to pay their tribute of respect 
to the memory of the late James Fenimore Cooper. While something 
more than courtesy long shown to me by Mr. Cooper, has made his loss 
like a private grief to me, I am aware that there will be many present 
whose feelings must be the same with mine ; and it would be grateful 
to me if, like them, I could bring my treasured sorrow to place with 
theirs, an offering to the one common object of our regard and love. 

As we grow old, our excited admiration of genius (while, perhaps, 
no less justly apprehensive than at first) calms down, and our thoughts 
turn oftener towards the moral nature of the man. Many of us can re- 
member how we were stirred on the first appearance of the " Spy," and 
how we connected the man with his work — for then our writers were 
few, and what they wrote brought them with the interest and life of 
individuality before our minds. We have all since that time threaded 
the forests with Cooper, and sailed with him over the seas. But do we 
not (at least at such a time as this) love more to dwell upon his open, 
manly, energetic nature, and upon that self-reliance and civil courage 
(much too rare amongst us) which would, with equal freedom, speak 
out in the face of the people, whether they were friendly or adverse ? 

Still, it is the humble, childlike trust, shining out in the closing day 
of this man of so firm a spirit, which most wins us as it sheds its reli- 
gious light through the gatliei'ing shadows of death, and bids us watch 
for a new dawn. And is there not sometliing hopeful in the reflection, 
tliat the first assembling of our literary men should be for a purpose 
so sacred as that of honouring one of their dead ? For a common sor- 
row makes the closest brotherhood, and death bids the living live in 
love, if they would pass in peace. With true sympathy and regard, 
I am, gentlemen, your obedient servant, 

RICH'D H. DANA. 
RuFus W. Griswold and Fitz- Greene Halleck, <fec. 

From Ralph Waldo Emerson. 

Concord, Mass. 

Dear Sir : — I am very unwilling to lose the occasion you offer me, 

both of hearing the celebration of Mr. Cooper's genius, and of meeting 

with so many excellent persons who wish to honour his memory. But 

my engagements, though not important, are not easily set aside 



CORRESPONDENCE OF THE COMMITTEE. 33 

I never had the good fortune to see Mr. Cooper ; but I have, in com- 
mon with almost all who speak English, an old debt to him of happy 
days, on the first appearance of the Pioneers. And, when I remember 
the unanimity with which that national novel was greeted, I perceive 
that the whole population is interested in your design, and that the dif- 
ficulty of the committee will be, not how to draw, but how to exclude. 

I am glad the suggestion of erecting a statue has prevailed, and I 
shall be obliged to you to give me an opportunity of adding my contri- 
bution, when it is time. Respectfully, your obedient servant, 

R. W. EMERSON. 
R. W. Geiswold, (fee. 

From Nathaniel Hawthorne. 

West Newton, Feb. 20<A, 1852. 
Dear Sir : — I greatly regret that circumstances render it impossible 
for me to be present on the occasion of Mr. Bryant's discourse in honour 
of James Fenimore Cooper. No man has a better right to be present 
than myself, if many years of most sincere and unwavering admiration 
of Mr. Cooper's writings can establish a claim. It is gratifying to ob- 
serve the earnestness with which the literary men of our country unite 
in paying honour to the deceased ; and it may not be too much to hope 
that, in the eyes of the public at large, American literature may hence- 
forth acquire a weight and value, which have not heretofore been con- 
ceded to it : time and death have begun to hallow it. 

Very respectfully yours, 

NATH'L HAWTHORNR 
Rev, Rufus W. Griswold, &c. 

From the Hon. Charles Sumner. 

"Washington, Feb. 22d, 1852. 

My Dear Sir : — It is not in my power to be present at the proposed 
demonstration in memory of the late Mr. Cooper. But I am glad of the 
opportunity afforded by the invitation with which I have been honoured, 
to express my regard for his name and my joy that he lived and wrote. 

As an author of clear and manly prose, as a pourtrayer to the life of 
scenes on land or sea, as a master of the keys to human feelings and as 
a beneficent contributor to the general fund of happiness, he is remem- 
bered with delight. 

As a patriot who loved his country, who illustrated its history, who 
advanced its character abroad, and, by his genius, won for it the unwill- 
ing regard of foreign nations, he deserves a place in the hearts of the 
American people. 



34 THE MEMORY OF COOPER. 

I have seen his works ia cities of France, Italy, and Germany. In 
all these countries he was read and admired. Thus by his pen Ameri- 
can intervention was peacefully, inoffensively, and triumphantly carried 
into the heart of the European Continent. 

In honouring him we exalt literature and the thrice blessed arts of 
peace. Our country will learn anew from your demonstration that there 
are glories other than those of state or of war. 

I have the honour to be, dear sir, your obedient servant, 

CHARLES SUMNER. 

Rev. Rufus W. Griswold. 

From Henry W. Longfellow. 

Cambridge, Mass. 

Mij Dear Sir : — If any thing could draw me away from my friends, 
at this cold season, it would be your friendly letter and the occasion 
which produced it. 

It would give me very sincere pleasure to be present on the 25th, to 
hear Mr. Bryant's discourse, and join you in paying honour to Cooper's 
memory. The country owes him a great debt of gratitude, and all who 
are of the guild of authorship should show the most alacrity in paying 
it. I was in no country of Europe where the name of Cooper was not 
familiarly known. In some of them he stands as almost the sole rep- 
resentative of our literature ; and knowing this, I should take great 
delight in listening to his eulogy from the lips of Bryant. But alas ! 
my College engagements are so imperative, that I cannot get away at 
this season even for a couple of days. Pray express my regrets to your 
Committee, and believe me. Very sincerely yours, 

HENRy'w. LONGFELLOW. ' 
Fitz-Geeene Halleck, Esq. 

From Francis Parhnan, Jr. 

BosTOx, Mass. 
Bear Sir : — I very much regret that I cannot attend the proposed 
meeting at Metropolitan Hall on the 25th. It is an honour to the na- 
tional character, and a good augury for the national literature that such a 
tribute should be offered to the memory of the most original and truly 
American of our authors. For myself, I have always felt a special ad- 
miration for Cooper's writings. They were my chosen favourites as a 
boy, and though it is at least nine or ten years since I opened them, yet 
the scenes and characters of several of his novels have been so stamped 
by the potency of his art upon my mind that I sometimes find it difficult 
to separate them distinctly from the recollections of my own past ex- 



CORRESPONDENCE OF THE COMMITTEE. 35 

periences. I may say, without exaggeration, tliat Cooper has had an in- 
fluence in determining the course of my life and pursuits. It would give 
me high satisfaction, if I were able, to join on this occasion in doing 
homage to his genius. Believe me, very sincerely, yours, 

r, -n n F- PARKMAN,Jr. 

Rev. Dk. Griswold. ' 

From Francis L. Hawks, D. D. 

New York, Feb. lUli, 1852. 

Dear Sir : — I cannot withhold the expression of my regret, that cir- 
cumstances will prevent my joining in this tribute of respect, to be paid 
this evening, to the memory of Mr. Cooper ; for it is a tribute alike due 
to the dead and honourable to the living. 

I could, however, do little more than by my presence bear my hum- 
ble testimony to the moral and intellectual worth of one whose most 
enduring monument will be found in his writings. 

Yet we owe it to ourselves to rear a memorial that may perpetuate 

our sense of his worth ; and it is a gratifying reflection, that living, as 

we do, in an age and country where we are of necessity obliged to 

travel on the path of what is termed " utilitarianism," in labouring on 

what is material, and subduing a continent for the uses of civilized 

man, we yet find cheering symptoms of national progress in another 

direction, in the fact that a public meeting can be held to do honour to 

the triumphs of mind in the field of pure literature. Very respectfully, 

FRANCIS L. HAWKS. 
Rev. Dr. Griswold, 

From Alfred B. Street. 

Albany, Feb. 21st, 1852. 

My Dear Sir : — After an absence from home, your letter, kindly in- 
viting my presence at Metropolitan Hall, on the evening of the 24th inst., 
is received. You need not be assured, my dear sir, that I agree heartily 
with the movement to do honour to James Fenimore Cooper — that great 
man whom America produced, not for herself alone but the world. 

Nothing can be more just and right than to erect a monument to 
liim. It is not needed, to be sure, to perpetuate his memory, for his 
works will do that, but it will serve as a token of the respect and 
esteem of his admiring countrymen. 

Your invitation gives me the greatest pleasure, and if my duties at 

the State Library will possibly allow me, I will be present at the pro 

ceedings. Believe me, yours, very truly and sincerely, 

ALFRED B. STREET. 
Rev. De. Griswold. 



36 THE MEMORY OF COOPER. 



From Saml F. B. Morse. 



PouGHKEEPsiE, February 23c?, 1852. 

My Dear Sir : — I truly regret that circumstances over which I have 
no control, prevent my participation in the services commemorative of 
the character, literary and moral, of my lamented friend, the late James 
Fenimore Cooper. I can scarcely yet realize the melancholy fact, that 
he is no longer with us, for the announcement of his death came upon 
me most unexpectedly. I can truly say tliat the pleasure of years of 
close intimacy was never for a moment clouded by the slightest cool- 
ness. We were in daily, almost hourly, intercourse while in Paris 
during the eventful years of 1831, 1832. I never met with a more 
sincere, warm-hearted, constant friend. No man came nearer to the 
ideal I had formed of a truly high-minded man. If he was at times 
severe or caustic in his remarks on others, it was when excited by the 
exhibition of tlie little arts of little minds. His own frank and open 
nature instinctively recoiled from contact with them, though found 
in the saloons of ambassadors or tlie iialls of royalty. He was an ar- 
dent, uncompromising friend of his country's institutions, and defended 
them when attacked at the risk of the threatened loss of fame and for- 
tune. 

His liberality, obedient to his generous sympathies, was scarcely 
bounded by prudence ; he was always ready to lend his purse and his 
pen to struggling merit, and many who are now reaping the fruits of 
his early kindness, will have learned of his decease with the most poig- 
nant sorrow. 

Although unable to be with you, I trust the Committee will not 
overlook me when they collect the funds for the contemplated monu- 
ment. "With sincere respect, your most obedient servant, 

SAM'L F. B. MORSE. 

Rev. Rufus W. Griswold, &c. 



From Jo fin P. Kennedy. 

Baltimore, Feb. 20th, 1852. 

Dear Sir : — Your invitation reached me too late to enable me to 
participate in the meeting which has been held at the City Hall in your 
city, to render appropriate honours to the memory of Mr. Cooper. 

I rejoice to see what has been done and what you propose to do. It 
is due to the eminent merits of Fenimore Cooper, that there should be 
an impressive public recognition of the loss which our country has sus- 



CORRESPONDENCE OF THE COMMITTEE. 37 

tained in his death. He stood confessedly at the head of a most attrac- 
tive and popular department of our literature, in which his extraordi- 
nary success had raised him up a fame that became national. The 
country claimed it as its own. This fame was acknowledged and appre- 
ciated not only wherever the English tongue is the medium of thought, 
but every where amongst the most civilized nations of Europe. 

Our literature, in the lifetime of the present generation, has grown 
to a maturity which has given it a distinction and honourable place in 
that aggregate which forms national character. No man has done more 
in his sphere to elevate and dignify that character than Fenimore 
Cooper : no man is more worthy than he, for such services, of the high- 
est honours appropriate to a literary benefactor. His genius has con- 
tributed a rich fund to the instruction and delight of his dountrymen, 
which will long b'e preserved amongst the choicest treasures of Ameri- 
can letters, and will equally induce to render our national literature 
attractive to other nations. We owe a memorial and a monument to 
the man who has achieved this. This work is the peculiar privilege of 
the distinguished scholars of New York, and I have no doubt will be 
warmly applauded, and if need be, assisted, by every scholar and friend 
of letters in the Union. 

With the best wishes for the success of this enterprise, I am, my 
dear sir, very truly yours, 

JOHN P. KENNEDY. 

Rev. Rufus W. Griswold. 



From William Gilmore Simms. 

Charleston, S. C, Feb. I5tk, 1852. 
My Dear Sir : — To you who have conversed with me respecting 
Cooper, and who have read those essays and criticisms in which I have 
attempted to illustrate and define his characteristics, it is scarcely neces- 
sary to say that no literary man in this country ever honoured his genius 
and patriotism more than myself. If I can do any thing here in the 
South to promote your purposes in this matter call upon me. But your 
letter reaches me just as I am preparing to follow my family up to the 
plantation, and it is quite impossible to avail myself of the tendered 
honour and satisfaction of meeting so many of our eminent men on this 
most interesting occasion. Yours, very sincerely, 

W. G. SIMMS. 
Rev. Dr. Gbiswold. 



38 THE M E M (J R V OF COOPER. 

From Mr. John R. Thompson. 

Richmond, Feb. 20th, 1852. 

Gentlemen, : — I am honoured by your letter, inviting me to be with 
you on the evening of the 24th of Febiniary, to unite in your fitting 
demonstration of respect for the memory of the late James Fenimore 
Cooper. An occasion of such peculiar interest rarely occurs, and it is 
therefore with very great regret that I am compelled to forego the satis- 
faction of being present. In offering you my thanks for the invitation 
you have given me, which was to myself so unexpected, I cannot forbear 
saying how much, in my poor judgment, the testimonial you propose 
does honour to yourselves as men, and as votaries of that noble pursuit 
of letters, of which, in America, Mr. Cooper was the most distinguished 
and successful follower. The arrangements are all in keeping with the 
excellent design, and contemplate such tributes as might have been paid 
to a fallen philosopher, by his brethren of the schools, in the grandest 
days of Greece. The presence of one of the greatest of living states- 
men, as presiding officer, and the most delightful of living essayists, while 
it may add notliing to the fame of the dead, will lend a rare dignity to 
tlie occasion, and a discourse from the lips of one of the most exalted of 
living poets, while it may not, in any degree, raise your estimate of the 
genius that has been withdrawn from the world, will yet worthily illus- 
trate the character and intellect of " the prose poet of the woods and 
seas," whose loss has been lamented wherever literature is valued among 
men. I have the honour to be, gentlemen, with high regard, very sin- 
cerely yours, JOHN R. THOMPSON. 

Rev. Rufus W. Griswold and Fitz-Greene Halleck 

From Mr. Charles G. Leland. 

Philadelphia, Feb. 21d, 1852. 
My Dear Sir : — I regret extremely that business prevents my accept- 
ing your invitation to the meeting in honour of Cooper. As any infor- 
mation, however unimportant, relative to our illustrious novelist mav 
not be without value at this moment, I take the liberty of communi- 
cating a few facts relative to the dissemination of his works in Germany. 
So long ago as 1827, her most eminent critic spoke of Cooper's great 
popularity among the people of Germany. Several translations of most 
of his works have appeared, some of them executed by celebrated 
men, who would undertake translations of none but authois of the 
highest character for genius. His " entire works, translated by several 
persons," were published at Frankfort in 1827, in 250 parts. Of this 
collection a second large edition appeared in 1834, and a third in 1851. 



w. c. Bryant's discourse. 39 

All bis works, even more than those of Shakspeare or Scott, are house- 
hold words to the German people. These facts illustrate a popularity 
enjoyed in that country by no other American. Indeed, our Cooper, I 
observed generally, during my residence in Germany, was by the gen- 
eral consent ranked among the greatest masters of romantic fiction pro- 
duced in any country or age. I hope the proposed tribute will be worthy 
of New York. Respectfully yours, CHARLES G. LELAND. 

Rev. Dr. Geiswold. 

The reading of the Committee's correspondence havmg 
been concludeH^, Mr. Webster rose, and bowing, said : 

Mr. Bryant will now proceed to pronounce a discourse on 
the Life, Character, and Genius of James Fenimore Cooper. 

Mr. Bryant came forward, greeted by the cheers of the 
assembly, and read as follows : 

It is now somewhat more than a year, since the friends 
of James Fenimore Cooper, in this city, were planning to 
give a public dinner in his honour. It was intended as an 
expression both of the regard they bore him personally, and 
of the pride they took in the glory his writings had reflected 
on the American name. We thought of what we should say 
in his hearmg ; in what terms, worthy of him and of us, we 
should speak of the esteem m which we held him, and of the 
interest we felt in a fame which had already penetrated to 
the remotest nook of the earth inhabited by civilized man. 

To-day we assemble for a sadder purpose : to pay to the 
dead some part of the honours then intended for the living. 
We bring our offering, but he is not here who should receive 
it ; in his stead are vacancy and silence ; there is no eye to 
brighten at our words, and no voice to answer. "It is an 
empty office that we perform," said VirgU, in his melodious 
verses, when commemorating the virtues of the young Mar- 



40 THE MEMORY OF COOPER. 

cellus, and bidding flowers be strewn, with full hands, over 
his early grave. We might apply the expression to the 
present occasion, but it would be true in part only. We can 
no longer do any thing for him who is departed, but we may 
do what will not be without fi'uit to those who remam. It is 
good to occupy our thoughts with the example of great talents 
in conjunction with great virtues. His genius has passed 
away with him ; but we may learn, from the history of his life, 
to employ the faculties we possess with useful activity and 
noble aims ; we may copy his magnanimous franliness, his 
disdain of every thmg that wears the faintest semblance of de- 
ceit, his refusal to comply with current abuses, and the courage 
with which, on all occasions, he asserted what he deemed 
truth, and combated what he thought error. 
^ The circumstances of Cooper's early life were remarkably 

suited to confirm the natural hardihood and manliness of his 
character, and to call forth and exercise that extraordinary 
power of observation, which accumulated the materials after- 
wards wielded and shaped by his genius. His father, while 
an inhabitant of Burlington, in New Jersey, on the pleasant 
banks of the Delaware, was the o\vner of large possessions on 
the borders of the Otsego Lake, in our o^vn state, and here, 
in the newly-cleared fields, he built, in 1786, the first house 
in Cooperstown. To this home, Cooper, who was born in 
Burlington, in the year 1789, was conveyed in his mfancy, 
and here, as he informs us in his preface to the Pioneers^ 
his first impressions of the external world were obtained. 
Here he passed his childhood, with the vast forest around 
him, stretching up the mountains that overlook the lake, and 
far beyond, in a region where the Indian yet roamed, and the 



w. c. Bryant's discourse. 41 

white hunter, half hidian m his dress and mode of life, sought 
his game, — a region in which the bear and the wolf Avere yet 
hunted, and the i:)anther, more formidable than either, lurked 
in the thickets, and tales of wanderings in the wilderness, and 
encounters with these fierce animals, beguiled the length of 
the winter nights. Of tills place, Cooper, although early re- 
moved from it to pursue his studies, was an occasional resident 
througliout his life, and here his last years were wholly passed. 
At the age of tliirteen he was sent to Yale College, where, 
notwithstanding Ms extreme youth, — for, with the exception 
of the poet, Hillhouse, he was the youngest of his class, and 
Hillhouse was afterwards withdrawn, — his progress in his 
studies is said to have been honourable to his talents. He 
left the college, after a residence of three years, and became 
a midshipman in the United States navy. Six years he f<.)l- 
lowed the sea, and there yet wanders, among those who are 
fond of literary anecdote, a story of the young sailor who, in 
the streets of one of the English ports, attracted the curiosity 
of the crowd, by explaining to his companions a Latin motto 
hi some public place. That during this period he made him- 
self master of the knowledge and the imagery which he after- 
wards employed to so much advantage in his romances of the 
sea, the finest ever written, is a common and obvious remark ; 
but it has not been, so for as I know, observed that from the 
discipline of a seaman's life he may have derived much of 
his readiness and fertility of invention, much of his skill in 
surrounding the personages of his novels with imaginary 
perils, and rescuing them by probable expedients. Of all 
pursuits, the life of a sailor is that Avhich fomiliarizes men to 
danger in its most fearful shapes, most cultivates presence 



42 THE MEMORY OF COOPER. 

of miiid, and most effectually calls forth the resources of 
prompt and fearless dexterity by Avhich immment evil is 
avoided. 

In 1811, Cooper, havmg resigned his post as midshipman, 
began the year by marrying Miss Delancey, sister of the 
present bishop of the diocese of Western New York, and 
entered upon a domestic life happily passed to its close. He 
went to live at Mamaroneck, in the county of Westchester, 
and while here he MTote and published the first of his novels, 
entitled Precaution. Concerning the occasion of writing this 
work, it is related, that once, as he was reading an English 
novel to JNIrs. Cooper, who has, within a short time past, been 
laid in the grave beside her illustrious husband, and of whom 
we may now say, that her goodness was no less eminent than 
his genius, he suddenly laid down the book, and said, " I 
believe I could write a better myself." Almost immediately 
he composed a chapter of a projected work of fiction, and read 
it to the same friendly judge, who encouraged him to finish it, 
and when it was completed, suggested its publication. Of 
this he had at the time no intention, but he was at length 
induced to submit the manuscript to the exammation of the 
late Charles Wilkes, of this city, in whose literary opinions 
he had great confidence. Mr. Wilkes advised that it should 
be published, and to these circumstances we owe it that 
Cooper became an author. 

I confess I have merely dipped into this work. The ex- 
periment was made with the first edition, deformed by a 
strange punctuation — a profusion of commas, and other 
pauses, which puzzled and repelled me. Its author, many 
years afterwards, revised and republished it, correcting this 



W. C. BRYANTS DISCOURSE. 43 

fault, and some faults of style also, so that to a casual inspec- 
tion, it appeared almost another work. It was a professed 
delineation of English manners, though the author had then 
seen nothing of English society. It had, however, the honour 
of being adopted by the country whose manners it described, 
and, being early republished in Great Britain, passed from 
the first for an English novel, I am not unwilling to believe 
what is said of it, that it contained a promise of the powers 
which its author aftei-wards put forth. 

Thirty years ago, in the year 1821, and in the thirty- 
second of his life. Cooper j^ublished the first of the works by 
which he will be known to posterity, the Spy. It took 
the reading world by a kind of surprise ; its merit was ac- 
knowledged by a rapid sale ; the public read with eagerness 
and the critics wondered. Many withheld their commenda- 
tions on account of defects in the plot or blemishes in the 
composition, arising from want of practice, and some waited 
till they could hear the judgment of European readers. Yet 
there were not wanting critics in this country, of whose good 
opinion any author in any part of the world might be proud, 
who spoke of it in the tei-ms it deserved. " Are you not de- 
lighted," WTote a literary friend to me, who has since risen to 
high distinction as a writer, both in verse and in prose, " are 
you not delighted with the Spy^ as a work of infinite spirit 
and genius V In that word genius lay the explanation of the 
hold which the work had taken on the minds of men. What 
it had of excellence was peculiar and unborrowed ; its pic- 
tures of life, whether in rejwse or activity, were drawn, with 
broad lights and shadows, immediately from living originals 
ill nature or in his own imagination. To him, whatever he 



44 THE MEMORY OF COOPER. 

described was true ; it was made a reality to him by the 
strength with which he conceived it. His power in the delin- 
eation of character was shown in the principal personage of his 
story, Harvey Birch, on whom, though he has chosen to em- 
ploy him in the ignoble office of a spy, and endowed him with 
the qualities necessary to his profession, — extreme circum- 
spection, fertility m stratagem, and the art of concealing his 
real character, — qualities which, in conjunction wath selfishness 
and greediness, make the scoundrel, he has bestowed the vir- 
tues of generosity, magnanimity, an intense love of country, 
a fidelity not to be corrupted, and a disinterestedness beyond 
temptation. Out of this combination of qualities he has 
wrought a character which is a favourite m all nations, and 
with all classes of mankind. 

It is said that if you cast a pebble into the ocean, at the 
mouth of our harbour, the vibration made in the water passes 
gradually on till it strikes the icy barriers of the deep at 
the south pole. The spread of Cooper's reputation is not 
confined within narrower limits. Tlie Spy is read in all the 
written dialects of Europe, and hi some of those of Asia. 
The French, immediately after its first appearance, gave it to 
the multitudes who read their far-diffused language, and 
placed it among the first works of its class. It was rendered 
into Castilian, and passed into the hands of those who dwell 
under the beams of the Southern Cross. At length it passed 
the eastern frontier of Europe, and the latest record I have 
seen of its progress towards absolute universality, is contained 
in a statement of the International Magazine, derived, I pre- 
sume, from its author, that in 1847 it was published in a 
Persian translation at Ispahan. Before this time, I doubt not, 



W. C. BRYANT.S DISCOURSE. 45 

they are reading it in some of the languages of Iluidostan, 
and, if the Chinese ever translated any thing, it would be in 
the hands of the many millions who inhabit the far Cathay. 

I have spoken of the hesitation which American critics felt 
in admitting the merits of the Spy, on account of crudities in 
the plot or the composition, some of which no doubt really 
existed. An exception must be made in favour of the Port 
Folio, which, in a notice written by ]Mrs. Sarah Hall, mother 
of the editor of that periodical, and author of Conversations 
on the Bible, gave the work a cordial welcome ; and Cooper, 
as I am informed, never forgot this act of timely and ready 
kindness. 

It was perhaps favourable to the immediate success of the 
Spy, that Cooper had few American authors to di\^dc mth 
him the public attention. That crowd of clever men and wo- 
men who now \\Tite for the magazines, who send out volumes 
of essays, sketches, and poems, and who supply the press with 
novels, biographies and historical works, were then, for the 
most part, either stammering their lessons in the schools, or 
yet unborn. Yet it is worthy of note, that just about the time 
that the Spy made its appearance, the dawn of what we 
now call our literature was just breaking. The concluding 
number of Dana's Idle Man, a work neglected at first, but 
now numbered among the best things of the kind in our lan- 
guage, was issued in the same month. The Sketch Book 
was then just completed ; the world was admiring it, and its 
author was meditating Bracebridge Hall. Miss Sedgwick, 
about the same time, made her first essay in that charming 
series of novels of domestic life in New England, which have 
gained her so high a reputation. Percival, now unhappily 



40 THE MEMORY OF COOPER. 

silent, had just put to press a volume of poems. I have a 
copy to an edition of Halleck's Fanny, published m the 
same year ; the poem of Yamoyden, by Eastburn and 
Sands, appeared almost simultaneously with it. Livingston 
was putting the finishing hand to his Report on the Penal 
Code of Louisiana, a work written with such grave, 
persuasive eloquence, that it belongs as much to our 
literature as to our jurisprudence. Other contemporaneous 
American works there were, now less read. Paul Allen's 
poem of Noah was just laid on the counters of the book- 
sellers. Arden published at the same time, in tliis city, a 
translation of Ovid's Tristia, in heroic verse, hi which the 
complaints of the effeminate Roman poet were rendered with 
great fidelity to the original, and sometimes not without 
beauty. If I may speak of myself, it was in that year that I 
timidly entrusted to the wmds and Avaves of public opinion a 
small cargo of my own — a poem entitled The Ages, and half 
a dozen shorter ones, in a thin duodecimo volume, printed at 
Cambridge. 

We had, at the same time, works of elegant literature, 
fresh from the press of Great Britam, which are still read and 
admired. Barry Cornwall, then a young suitor for fiime, 
published in^ the same year his Marcia Colonna ; Byron, in 
the full strength and fertility of his genius, gave the readers 
of English his tragedy of Marino Faliero, and was in the 
midst of his spirited controversy Avith Bowles concerning the 
poetry of Pope. The Spy had to sustain a comparison Avith 
Scott's Antiquary, published simultaneously with it, and with 
Lockhart's Valerius, Avhich seems to me one of the most re- 
markable works of fiction ever composed. 



W. C. BRYANTS DISCOURSE. 47 

In 1823, and in his thirty-fourth year, Cooper brought out 
his novel of the Pioneers, the scene of which was laid on the 
borders of liis o^m beautiful lake. In a recent survey of Mr. 
Cooper's works, by one of his admirers, it is intimated that 
the reputation of this work may have been in some degi-ee 
factitious. I camiot tliink so ; I camiot see how such a work 
could fail of becoming, sooner or later, a favourite. It was 
several years after its first appearance that I read the Pioneers, 
and I read it witli a delighted astonishment. Here, said I to 
myself, is the poet of rural life m this country — our Hesiod, 
our Tlieocritus, except that he ^vrites without the restraint of 
numbers, and is a greater poet than they. In the Pioneers, as 
in a moving picture, are made to pass before us the hardy oc- 
cupations and spirited aniusements of a prosperous settlement, 
in a fertile region, encompassed for leagues around with the 
primeval wilderness of woods. The seasons in their tliftercnt 
aspects, bringing Avith them their different employments ; for- 
ests falling before the axe ; the cheerful population, -with the first 
mild day of spring, engaged in the sugar-orchards ; the chase 
of the deer through the deep woods, and into the lake ; tur- 
key-shootings, during the Christmas holidays, in which the In- 
dian marksman vied for the prize of skill with the white man ; 
s-wift sleigh-rides under the bright Avnnter sun, and perilous 
encounters with wild animals in the forests ; these, and other 
scenes of rural lifcj drawn, as Cooper knew how to draw 
them, in the bright and healthful colouring of which he Avas 
master, are interwoven with a regular narrative of human for- 
tunes, not unskilfully constructed ; and how could such a work 
be otherwise than popular 1 

In the Pioneers, Lcatherstockuig is first introduced — a 



48 THE MEMOKY OF COOPER. 

philosopher of the woods, ignorant of books, but instructed in 
all that nature, without the aid of science, could reveal to the 
man of quick senses and inquiring intellect, whose life has 
been passed under the open sky, and in companionship with a 
race whose animal perceptions are the acutest and most culti- 
vated of which there is any example. But Leatherstockmg 
has higher qualities ; in him there is a genial blending of the 
gentlest virtues of the civilized man with the better nature of 
the aboriginal tribes ; all that in them is noble, generous, and 
ideal, is adopted into his own kindly character, and all that is 
evil is rejected. But why should I attempt to analyze a char- 
acter so familiar? Leatherstocking is acknowledged, on all 
hands, to be one of the noblest, as well as most striking and 
original creations of fiction. In some of his subsequent nov- 
els. Cooper — for he had not yet attained to the full maturity 
of his powers — heightened and ennobled his first conception 
of the character, but in the Pioneers it dazzled the world with 
the splendour of novelty. 

His next work was the Pilot, in which he showed how, 
from the vicissitudes of a life at sea, its perils and escapes, 
from the beauty and terrors of the great deep, from the work- 
ing of a vessel on a long voyage, and from the frank, brave 
and generous, but peculiar character of the seaman, may be 
drawn materials of romance by which the minds of men may 
be as deeply moved as by any thing in the power of romance 
to present. In this walk, Cooper has had many disciples, but 
no rival. All who have since written romances of the sea 
have been but travellers in a coimtry of which he was the 
great discoverer, and none of them all seemed to have loved 
a ship as Cooper loved it, or have been able so strongly to in- 



W. C. BR V ANTS DISCOURSE. 49 

terest all classes of readers iu its fortunes. Among other per- 
sonages dra^^^l with great strength in the Pilot, is the general 
favourite, Tom Coffin, the thorough seaman, with all the vir- 
tues, and one or two of the infirmities of his profession, super- 
stitious, as seamen are apt to be, yet whose superstitions strike 
us as but an irregular growth of his devout recognition of the 
Power who holds the ocean in the hollow of his hand ; true- 
hearted, gentle, full of resources, collected in danger, and at 
last calmly perishing at the post of duty, with the vessel he 
has long guided, by what I may call a great and magnanimous 
death. His rougher and coarser companion, Boltrope, is 
drawn with scarcely less skill, and with a no less vigorous 
hand. 

The Pioneers is not Cooper's best tale of the American 
forest, nor the Pilot, perhaps, in all respects, his best tale of 
the sea ; yet, if he had ceased to write here, the measure of 
his fame would, possibly, have been scarcely less ample than 
it now is. Neither of them is far below the best of his pro- 
ductions, and in them appear the two most remarkable crea- 
tions of his imagination — two of the most remarkable charac- 
ters in all fiction. 

It was about this time that my acquaintance with Cooper 
began, an acquaintance of more than a quarter of a century, 
in which his deportment towards me was that of unvaried 
kindness. He then resided a considerable part of the year in 
this city, and here he had founded a weekly club, to which 
many of the most distinguished men of the place belonged. 
Of the members who have since passed away, were Chancellor 
Kent, the jurist ; Wiley, the intelligent and liberal bookseller ; 



50 THE MEMORY OF COOPER. 

Henry D. Sedgwick, always active in schemes of benevolence ; 
Jarvis, the 2?ainter, a man of infinite humour, whose jests 
awoke inextinguishable laughter; De Kay, the naturalist; 
Sands, the poet ; Jacob Harvey, whose genial memory is cher- 
ished by many friends. Of those who are yet li\'ing was 
Morse, the inventor of the electric telegraph ; Durand, then one 
of the first of engravers, and now no less illustrious as a painter ; 
Henry James Anderson, whose acquirements might aAvaken 
the envy of the ripest scholars of the old world ; Halleck, the 
poet and wit ; Verplanck, who has given the world the best 
edition of Shakspeare for general readers ; Dr. King, now at 
the head of Columbia College, and his two immediate prede- 
cessors in that office. I might enlarge the list with many other 
names of no less distinction. The army and navy contributed 
their proportion of members, whose names are on record in 
our national history. Cooper when in town was always pres- 
ent, and I remember bemg struck with the inexhaustible vi- 
vacity of his conversation and the mmuteness of his knowledge 
in every thing which depended upon acuteness of observa- 
tion and exactness of recollection. I remember, too, being 
somewhat startled, coming as I did from the seclusion of a 
country life, with a certain emphatic frankness in his manner, 
which, however, I came at last to like and to admire. The 
club met in the hotel called Washington Hall, the site of which 
is now occupied by part of the circuit of Stewart's marble 
building. 

Lionel Lincoln, which cannot be ranked among the suc- 
cessful productions of Cooper, was published in 1825 ; and in 
the year followmg appeared the Last of the Mohicans, which 
more than recovered the ground lost by its predecessor. In 



w. c. Bryant's discourse. 51 

this work, the construction of the narrative has signal defects, 
but it is one of the triumphs of the author's genius, that he 
makes us unconscious of them while we read. It is only 
when we have had time to awake from the intense interest in 
which he has held us by the vivid reality of his narrative, and 
have begun to search for faults in cold blood, that we are able 
to find them. In the Last of the Mohicans we have a bolder 
portraiture of Leatherstocking than in the Pioneers. 

This work was published in 1826, and in the same year 
Cooper sailed with his family for Europe. He left New 
York as one of the vessels of war, described in his romances 
of the sea, goes out of port, amidst the thunder of a parting 
salute from the big guns on the batteries. A dinner was 
given him just before his departure, attended by most of the 
distinguished men of the city, at which Peter A. Jay presided, 
and Dr. Kmg addressed him in terms which some then 
thought too glowing, but which would now seem sufficiently 
temperate, expressmg the good wishes of his friends, and 
dwelling on the satisfaction they promised themselves in pos- 
sessing so illustrious a representative of American literature 
in the old world. Cooper was scarcely in France when he re- 
membered his friends of the weekly club, and sent frequent 
missives to be read at its meetings ; but the club missed its 
founder, went into a declme, and not long afterwards quietly 
expired. 

The first of Cooper's novels published after leaving Amer- 
ica was the Prairie, which appeared early m 1827, a work, 
with the admu-ers of which I wholly agree. I read it with a 
certain awe, an undefined sense of sublimity, such as one ex- 
periences on entering, for the first time, upon these immense 



52 THE MEMORY OF COOPER. 

grassy deserts from which the work takes its name. The 
squatter and his family — that brawny old man and his large- 
limbed sons, living in a sort of primitive and j^atriarchal bar- 
barism, sluggish on ordinary occasions, but terrible when 
i-oused, like the hurricane that sweeps the grand but monoto- 
nous wilderness in which they dwell — seem a natural growth of 
those ancient fields of the west. Lcatherstocking, a hunter in 
the Pioneers, a warrior in the Last of the Mohicans, and now, 
in his extreme old age, a trapper on the prairie, declined in 
strength, but undecayed in intellect, and looking to the near 
close of his life, and a grave under the long grass, as calmly 
as the labourer at sunset looks to his evening slumber, is no 
less in harmony with the silent desert in which he wanders. 
Equally so are the Indians, still his companions, copies of the 
American savage somewhat idealized, but not the less a part 
of the wild nature in which they have their haunts. 

Before the year closed. Cooper had given the world another 
nautical tale, the Red Rover, which, with many, is a greater 
favourite than the Pilot, and with reason, pei'haps, if we con- 
sider principally the incidents, which are conducted and de- 
scribed with a greater mastery over the springs of pity and 
terror. 

It happened to Cooper Avhile he was abroad, as it not im- 
fi-equently happens to our countrymen, to hear the United 
States disadvantageously compared with Europe, He had 
himself been a close observer of things both here and in the 
old woi'ld, and was conscious of being able to refute the de 
tractors of his country in regard to many points. He pub- 
lished in 1828, after he had been two years m Europe, a series 
of letters, entitled Notions of the Americans, by a Travellinff 



\T . c . Bryant's discourse. 53 

Bachelor, in which he gave a tavourable account of the working 
of our institutions, and vmdicated his country from various 
flippant and ill-natured misrepresentations of foreigners. It is 
rather too measured in style, but is written from a mind full 
<if the subject, and from a memory wonderfully stored- with 
particulars. Although twenty-four years have elapsed since 
its publication, but little of the Aindication has become 
obsolete. 

Cooper loved his country and was proud of her history and 
her institutions, but it puzzles many that he should have ap- 
peared, at different times, as her eulogist and her censor. 
My friends, she is worthy both of praise and of blame, and 
Cooper was not the man to shrink from bestowing either, at 
what seemed to him the proper time. lie defended her from 
detractors abroad ; he sought to save her from flatterers at 
home. I \\\\\ not say that he was in as good humour with his 
countrv when he wrote Home us Found, as when he wrote / 
his Notions of the Americans, but this I will say, that whether 
he commended or censured, he did it in the sincerity of his 
heart, as a true American, and in the belief that it would do 
good. Ilis JVoiions of the Americans were more likely to 
lessen than to increase his popularity in Europe, inasmuch as 
they were j)ut forth without the slightest regard to European 
prejudices. 

In 1829 he brought out the novel entitled the Wept of 
Wish-ton- Wish, one of the few of his works which we now 
rarely hear mentioned. lie was engaged in the composition 
of a third nautical tale, which he afterwards published under 
the name of the Water- Witch, when the memorable revolu- 
tion of the Tlu'ee Davs of Jul v broke out. lie saw a govern- 



54 THE MEMORY OF COOPER. 

ment, ruling by fear and in defiance of public opinion, over- 
thrown in a few hours, Math little bloodshed ; he saw the 
French nation, far from being uitoxicated with their new lib- 
erty, peacefully addressing themselves to the discussion of the 
uistitutions under which they were to live. A work which 
Cooper afterwards published, his Residence in Europe, gives 
the outline of a plan' of government for France, furnished by 
hizn at that time to La Fayette, with whom he was then on 
habits of close and daily mtimacy. It was his idea to give 
permanence to the new order of things by associating two 
strong parties m its support, the friends of legitimacy and the 
republicans. He suggested that Henry V. should be called 
to the hereditary tlii'one of France, a youth yet to be educa 
ted as the head of a free people, that the peerage should be 
abolished, and a legislature of two chambers established, with 
a constituency of at least a million and a half of electors ; the 
senate to be chosen by the general vote, as the representatives 
of the entire nation, and the members of the other house to be 
chosen by districts, as the representatives of the local interests. 
To the middle ground of politics so ostentatiously occupied by 
Louis Philippe at the beginning of his reign, he predicted a 
brief duration, believing that it would speedily be merged in 
despotism, or supplanted by the popular rule. His prophecy 
has been fulfilled more amply than he could have imagined — 
fulfilled in both its alternatives. 

In one of the controversies of that time. Cooper bore a 
distuiguished part. Tlie Revue Britanniqu-e, a periodical pub- 
lished m Paris, boldly affirmed the government of the United 
States to be one of the most expensive in the world, and its 
[>eople among the most heavily taxed of mankind. This as- 



w. c. Bryant's discourse. 55 

sertion was supported with a certain show of proof, and tlio 
writer aflected to have established the conclusion that a re- 
public must necessarily be more expensive than a monarchy. 
The partisans of the court were delighted with the reasoning 
of the article, and claimed a triumph over our ancient friend 
La Fayette, who, during forty years, had not ceased to hold 
up the government of the United States as the cheapest in the 
world. At the suggestion of La Fayette, Cooper replied to 
this attack upon his country, in a letter which was translated 
into French, and together with another from General Ber- 
trand, for many years a resident in America, was laid before 
the people of France. 

These two letters provoked a shower of rejoinders, in 
which, according to Cooper, misstatements were mingled with 
scurrility. He commenced a series of letters on the question 
m dispute, which were published in the National, a daily 
sheet, and gave the first evidence of that extraordmary acute- 
ness in controversy, which was no less characteristic of his 
mind than the vigour of liis imagination. The enemies of La 
Fayette pressed into their service Mr. Leavitt Harris, of 
New Jersey, afterwards our charge (Vaffaires at the court of 
France, but Cooper replied to Mr. Harris, m the National of 
May 2d, 1832, closing a discussion in which he had effectually 
silenced those who objected to our institutions on the score of 
economy. Of these letters, which would form an important 
chapter in political science, no entire copy, I have been told, 
is to be found in this countr}'. 

One of the consequences of earnest controversy is almost 
invariably personal ill-will. Cooper was told by one who 
held an official station under the French government, that the 



56 THE MEMORY OF COOPER. 

part he had taken iii this dispute concerning taxation, would 
neither be forgotten nor forgiven. The dislike he had in- 
curred in that quarter was strengthened by his novel of the 
Bravo, published in the year 1831, Avhile he was in the midst 
of his quarrel with the aristocratic party. In that Avork, of 
which he has himself justly said, that it was thoroughly Amer- 
ican, in all that belonged to it, his object was to show how in- 
stitutions, professedly created to prevent violence and wrong, 
become, when perverted from their natural destmation, the 
mstruments of mjustice, and how, in every system which 
makes power the exclusive property of the strong, the weak 
are sure to be oppressed. Tlie work is wi'itten wdth all the 
Angour and spirit of liis best novels ; the magnificent city of 
Venice, in which the scene of the story is laid, stands contin- 
ually before the imagination, and from time to time the gor- 
geous ceremonies of the Venetian republic pass under our 
eyes, such as the marriage of the Doge with the Adriatic, and 
the contest of the gondolas for the prize of speed. The Bravo 
himself and several of the other characters are strongly con- 
ceived and distinguished, but the most remarkable of them all 
is the spirited and generous-hearted daughter of the jailer. 

It has been said by some critics, who judge of Cooper by 
his failures, that he had no skill in drawing female characters. 
By the same process, it might, I suppose, be shown that 
Raphael was but an ordinary painter. It must be admitted 
that when Cooper drew a lady of high breeding, he was apt 
to pay too much attention to the formal part of her character, 
and to make her a mere bundle of cold proprieties. But 
when he places his heroines in some situation in life which 
leaves him nothing to do but to make them natural and true, 



w. c. Bryant's discourse. 57 

I know of nothuig finer, nothing more attractive or more indi- 
vidual than tlic portraitures he has given us. 

Figaro^ tlio wittiest of the French periodicals, and at that 
time on the liberal side, commended the Bravo ; the journals 
on the side of the government censured it. Figaro after- 
wards passed mto the hands of the aristocratic party, and 
Cooper became the object of its attacks. He was not, how- 
ever, a man to be driven from any purpose which he had 
formed, either by flattery or abuse, and both were tried with 
equal ill success. In 1832 he published his UeidenmaHer, and 
in 1833 his Headsman of Berne, both with a political design 
similar to that of the Bravo, though neither of them takes the 
same high rank among his works. 

In 1833, after a residence of seven years in different parts 
of Europe, but mostly in France, Cooper returned to his 
native coimtry. The welcome which met him here was 
somewhat chilled by the effect of the attacks made upon 
him in France, and remembering with what zeal, and at 
what sacrifice of the universal acceptance which his works 
would otherwise have met, he had maintamed the cause of 
his country against the wits and orators of the court party 
in France, we cannot wonder that he should have felt this 
coldness as undeserved. He published, shortly after liis an-i- 
val in this country, A Letter to his Countrymen, in which he 
complained of the censures cast upon hiin in the American 
newspapers, gave a history of the part he had taken in ex- 
posing the misstatements of the Bevue Britatmique, and 
warned his comitrymen against the too common error of re- 
sortuig, -svith a blind deference, to foreign authorities, often 
swayed by national or political prejudices, for our opinions 



58 THE MEMORY OF COOPER. 

of American authors. Going beyond this topic, he examined 
and reprehended the habit of applying to the interpretation 
of our own constitution maxims derived fi-om the practice of 
other governments, particuhirly that of Great Britain. The 
importance of construing that instrument by its own princi- 
ples, he illustrated by considering several points in dispute 
between the parties of the day, on which he gave very de- 
cided opmions. 

Tlie principal effect of this pamphlet, as it seemed to me, 
was to awaken in certain quarters a kind of resentment that a 
successful writer of fiction should presume to give lessons in 
politics. I meddle not here with the conclusions to which he 
arrived, though I must be allowed to say that they were 
stated and argued with great ability. In 1835 Cooper pub- 
lished The Mbmiikins, a satirical work, partly with a political 
aim, and in the same year appeared his Am£ncan^J)£mQ£j:at, — 
a view of the civil and social relations of the United States, 
discussmg more gravely various topics touched upon in the 
former work, and j^ointing out in what respects he deemed 
the American people in their practice to have fallen short of 
the excellence of their institutions. 

He found time, however, for a more genial task, that of 
giving to the world his observations on foreign countries. In 
1836 appeared his Sketches of Switzerland^ a series of letters 
in four volumes, the second part published about two months 
after the first, a delightful work, written in a more fluent and 
flexible style than his Notions of the Americans. The first 
part of Gleanings in Uuro2)e, gi\'ing an account of his resi- 
dence in France, followed in the same year, and the second 
{)art of the same work, containing his observations on Eng- 



w. c. Bryant's discourse. 59 

land, was published in April, 1837. In these works, forming 
a series of eight volumes, he relates and describes with much 
of the same distinctness as in his novels ; and his remarks on 
the manners and institutions of the different countries, often 
sagacious, and always peculiarly his own, derive, from their fre- 
<|uent reference to contemporary events, an historical interest. 
hi 1838 appeared Homeivard Bound, and Home as Found, 
two satirical novels, in which Cooper held up to ridicule a 
certain class of conductors of the newspaper press in America. 
These works had not the good fortune to become popular. 
G)oper did not, and, because he was too deeply in earnest, 
perhaps would not, infuse into his satirical works that gayety 
without which satire becomes wearisome. I believe, however, 
that if they had been ■\\Tittcn by any body else they would 
have met with more favour ; but the world knew that Cooper 
was able to give them something better, and would not be 
satisfied with any thing short of his best. Some childishly 
imagined that because, in the two works I have just mentioned, 
a newspaper editor is introduced, in whose character almost 
every possible vice of his profession is made to find a place, 
Cooper intended an indiscriminate attack upon the whole 
body of wTiters for the newspaper press, forgetting that such 
a portraiture was a satire only on those to whom it bore a 
likeness. We have become less sensitive and more reasona- 
ble of late, and the monthly periodicals make sport for their 
readers of the follies and ignorance of the newspaper editors, 
without awakening the slightest resentment ; but Cooper led 
the way in this sort of discipline, and I remember some in- 
stances of towering indignation at his audacity expressed in 
the journals of that time. 



CO THE MEMORY OF COOPER. 

The next year Cooper made his apjiearance before the 
public in a ncAV department of wTiting ; his Naval History of 
the United States was brought out in two octavo volumes at 
Philadelphia, by Carey & Lea. In wi'itmg his stories of the 
sea, his attention had been much turned to tliis subject, and 
liis mind filled with striking incidents from expeditions and 
battles in which our naval commanders had been engaged. 
This made his task the lighter, but he gathered his materials 
with great industry, and with a conscientious attention to ex- 
actness, for he was not a man to take a fact for granted, or 
allow imagination to usurp the place of inquiry. He digested 
our naval annals into a narrative, wi'itten with spirit, it is true, 
but w^ith that air of sincere dealing wliich the reader willingly 
takes as a pledge of its authenticity. 

An abridgment of the work was afterwards prepared and 
published by the author. The Edinburgh Review, in an arti- 
cle professing to examine the statements both of Cooper's 
work and of The History of the English Navy, written by 
Mr. James, a surgeon by profession, made a violent attack 
upon the American historian. Unfortunately, it took James's 
nai'rative as its sole guide, and followed it implicitly. Cooper 
replied in the Democratic Bevieiv for January, 1840, and by 
a masterly analysis ,of his statements, convicting James of 
self-contradiction m almost every particular in Avhich he dif^ 
fered from himself, refuted both James and the re\aewer. 
It was a refutation wliich admitted of no rejoinder. 

Sciirce any thing in Cooper's life was so remarkable, or so 
strUvingly illustrated his character, as his contest with the 
newspaper press. He engaged in it after provocations, many 



■\v. c. Bryant's discourse. 61 

and long endured, and prosecuted it through years with great 
energy, perseverance, and practical dexterity, till he was left 
master of the field. In what 1 am about to say of it, I hope I 
shall not give offence to any one, as I shall speak without the 
slightest malevolence towards those Avith whom he waged this 
controversy. Over soine of them, as over their reno-svncd ad- 
versary, the grave has now closed. Yet where shall the truth 
be spoken, if not beside the grave ? 

I have already alluded to the principal causes which pro- 
voked the newspaper attacks upon Cooper. If he had never 
meddled with questions of government on either side of the 
Atlantic, and never satirized the newspaper press, I have little 
doubt that he would have been spared these attacks. I can- 
not, however, ascribe them all, or even the greater part of 
them, to personal malignity. One journal followed the ex- 
ample of another, with little reflection, I thmk, in most cases, 
till it became a sort of fashion, not merely to decry his 
works, but to arraign his motives. 

It is related that, in 1832, while he was at Paris, an article 
was showai him in an American newspaper, purporting to be 
a criticism on one of his works, but reflecting with much as- 
perity on his personal character. " I care nothing," he is re- 
poi'ted to have said, " for the criticism, but I am not indiffer- 
ent to the slander. If these attacks on my character should 
be kept up five years after my return to America, I shall re- 
sort to the New York courts for protection." He gave the 
newspaper press of this state the full period of forbearance on 
which he had fixed, but finding that forbearance seemed to en- 
courage assault, he sought redress in the courts of law. 

When these litigations were first begun, I recollect it 



62 THE MEMORY OF COOPER. 

seemed to me that Cooper had taken a step which would give 
him a great deal of trouble, and effect but little good. I said 
to myself — 

" Alas ! Leviathan is not so tamed !" 

As he proceeded, however, I saw that he had understood the 
matter better than I. He put a hook into the nose of this 
huge monster, wallowing in his inky pool and bespattering 
the passers-by ; he dragged liim to the land and made him 
tractable. One suit followed another ; one editor was sued, 
I think, half-a-dozen times ; some of them found themselves 
under a second indictment before the first w^as tried. In 
vindicating himself to liis readers, against the charge of pub- 
lishing one libel, the angry journalist often floundered into 
another. The occasions of these prosecutions seem to have been 
always carefully considered, for Cooper was almost uniformly 
successful in obtaining verdicts. In a letter of his, wi'itten in 
February, 1843, about five years, I think, from the commence- 
ment of the first prosecutions, he says : " I have beaten every 
man I have sued, who has not retracted his libels," 

In one of these suits, commenced against the late William 
L. Stone, of the Commercial Advertiser, and referred to the 
arbitration of three distinguished lawyers, he argued, himself, 
the question of the authenticity of his account of the battle of 
Lake Erie, which was the matter m dispute. I listened to his 
opening ; it w^as clear, skilful, and persuasive, but his closing 
argument was said to be splendidly eloquent. " I have heard 
nothing like it," said a barrister to me, " since the days of 
Emmet." 

Cooper behaved liberally towards his antagonists, so far 



W. C. BRYANTS DISCOURSE. C3 

as pecuniary damages were concerned, though some of them 
wholly escaped their payment by bankruptcy. After, I be- 
lieve, about six years of litigation,^ the newspaper press gradu- 
ally subsided into a pacific disposition towards its adversary, 
and the contest closed with the account of pecuniary profit and 
loss, so far as he was concerned, nearly balanced. The occa- 
sion of these suits was far ft-om honourable to those who pro- 
voked them, but the result was, I had almost said, creditable 
to all parties ; to him, as the courageous prosecutor, to the 
administration of justice in this country, and to the docility of 
the newspaper press, which he had disciplined into good 
manners. 

It was while he was in the midst of these litigations, that 
he published, in 1840, the Pathfinder. People had begun to 
thmk of him as a controversialist, acute, keen, and persevering, 
occupied with his personal wTongs and schemes of attack and 
defence. They were startled from this estimate of his char- 
acter by the moral beauty of that glorious work — I must so 
call it ; by the vividness and force of its delmeations, by the 
unspoiled love of nature, apparent in every j)age, and by the 
fresh and warm emotions which every where gave life to the 
narrative and the dialogue. Cooper was now in his fifty-first 
year, but nothing which he had produced m the earlier part of 
his literary life was written with so much of what might seem 
the generous fervour of youth, or showed the faculty of in- 
vention in higher vigour. I recollect that near the tune of its 
appearance I was uiformed of an observation made upon it by 
one highly distinguished in the literature of our country and 
of the age, between whom and the author an unhappy coolness 
had for some years existed. As he finished the reading of the 



64 THE MEMORY OF COOPER. 

Pathfinder, he exclaimed, " They may say what they will of 
Cooper ; the man who wrote this book is not only a great 
man, but a good man." 

The readers of- the Pathfinder were quickly reconciled to 
the fourth appearance of Leatherstocking, when they saw him 
made to act a different part from any which the author had 
hitherto assigned him- — when they saw him sho^vn as a lover, 
and placed in the midst of associations which invested his 
character with a higher and more affecting heroism. In this 
work are two female characters, portrayed in a masterly man- 
ner, the corporal's daughter, Mabel Dunham, generous, reso- 
lute, yet womanly, and the young Indian woman, called by 
her tribe, the Dew of June, a personification of female truth, 
affection, and sympathy, with a strong aboriginal cast, yet a 
product of nature as bright and pure as that from which she 
is named. 

Mercedes of Castile, published near the close of the same 
year, has none of the stronger characteristics of Cooper's ge- 
nius, but in the Deerslayer, wliich appeared in 1841, another 
of his Leatherstockmg tales, he gave us a work rivalling the 
Pathfinder. Leatherstockmg is brought before us in his early 
youth, in the first exercise of that keen sagacity which is 
blended so harmoniously with a simple and ingenuous good- 
ness. The two daughters of the retired freebooter dwellinsr 
on the Otsego lake, inspire scarcely less interest than the prin- 
cipal personage ; Judith in the pride of her beauty and intel- 
lect, her good impulses contending with a fatal love of admi- 
ration, holding us fiiscinated with a constant interest in her 
fiite, which, with consummate skill, we are permitted rather to 
('( )njecturc than to knoAv ; and Hetty, scarcely less beautiful in 



w. c. Bryant's discourse, 65 

person, weak-minded, but wise in the midst of that weakness, 
beyond the wisdom of the loftiest intellect, through the power 
of conscience and religion. The character of Hetty would 
have been a hazardous experiment in feebler hands, but in his 
it was admirably successful. 

The Two Admirals and Wing-and- Wing were given to the 
public in 1842, both of them taking a high rank among Coo- 
per's sea-tales. The first of these is a sort of naval epic in 
prose ; the flight and chase of armed vessels hold us in breath- 
less suspense, and the sea-fights are described with a terrible 
power. In the later sea-tales of Cooper, it seems to me that 
the mastery with which he makes his grand processions of 
events pass before the mind's eye is even greater than in his 
earlier. The next year he published the Wyandotte or Hutted 
Knoll, one of his beautiful romances of the woods, and in 
1844 two more of his sea-stories, Afloat and Ashore and Miles 
Wallingford its sequel. The long series of his nautical tales 
was closed by Jack Tier, or the Florida Beef, published in 
1848, when Cooper was in his sixtieth year, and it is as full of 
spirit, energy, invention, life-like presentation of objects and 
events — 

The vision and the fitculty divine — 

as any thing he had written. 

Let me pause here to say that Cooper, though not a manu- 
facturer of verse, was in the highest sense of the word a poet ; 
his imagination Avrought nobly and grandly, and imposed its 
creations on the mind of the reader for realities. With him 
there was no withering, or decline, or disuse of the poetic fac- 
ulty ; as he stepped downward from the zenith of life, no 



66 



THE MEMORY OF COOPER. 



shadow or chill came over it ; it was like the year of some 
genial climates, a perpetual season of verdure, bloom, and 
fruitfulness. As these works came out, I was rejoiced to see 
that he was unspoiled by the controversies in which he had 
allowed himself to become engaged, that they had not given, 
to these better expressions of liis genius, any tinge of misan- 
thropy, or appearance of contracting and closing sympathies, 
any trace of an interest in his fellow-beings less large and free 
than in his eai'lier works. 

Before the appearance of his Jack Tier, Cooper published, 
in 1845 and the following year, a series of novels relating to 
the Anti-rent question, in which he took great interest. He 
thought that the disposition, manifested in certain quarters, to 
make concessions to what he deemed a denial of the rights of 
property, was a first step m a most dangerous path. To dis- 
courage this disposition, he wrote Satanstoe, The Chainhearer, 
and The Redskins. They are didactic in their design, and 
want the freedom of invention which belongs to Cooper's best 
novels ; but if they had been written by any body but Cooper, 
— by a member of Congress, for example, or an eminent poli- 
tician of any class, — they would have made Ins reputation. It 
was said, I am told, by a distinguished jurist of our state, that 
they entitled the author to as high a place in law as his other 
works had won for him in literature. 

I had thought, in meditating the plan of this discourse, to 
mention all the works of Mr. Cooper, but the length to which 
I have found it extending has mduced me to pass over several 
written in the last ten years of liis life, and to confine myself 
to those which best illustrate his literary character. Tlie last 
of his novels was The Ways of the Hour, a work in which the 



w. c. bryakt's discourse. 67 

objections he entertained to the trial by jury in civil causes 
were stated in the form of a narrative. 

It is a voluminous catalogue — that of Cooper's published 
works — but it comprises not all he wrote. He committed to 
the fii-e, without remorse, many of the fruits of his literary in- 
dustry. It was understood, some years since, that he had a 
work ready for the press on the Middle States of the Union, 
principally illustrative of their social history ; but it has not 
been found among his manuscripts, and the presumption is 
that he must have destroyed it. He had planned a work on 
the Towns of Manhattan, for the publication of which he 
made arrangements with Mr. Putnam of this city, and a part 
of which, already wTitten, was in press at the time of his 
death. Tlie printed part has since been destroyed by fire, 
but a portion of the manuscript was recovered. Tlie work, 
I leam, will be completed by one of the family, who, within 
a few years past, has earned an honourable name among the 
authors of our country. Great as was the number of his 
works, and great as was the favour with which they were 
received, the pecuniary rewards of his success were far less 
than has been generally supposed — scarcely, as I am informed, 
a tenth part of what the common rumour made them. His 
fame was infinitely the largest acknowledgment which this 
most successful of American authors received for his la- 
bours. 

The Ways of the Hour appeared in 1850. At this time 
his personal appearance was remarkable. He seemed in per- 
fect health and in the highest energy and activity of his facul- 
ties. I have scarcely seen any man at that period of life on 
whom his years sat more lightly. His conversation had lost 



68 THE MEMORY OF COOPER. 

none of its liveliness, though it seemed somewhat more gentle 
and forbearing in tone, and his spirits none of their elasticity. 
He was contemplating, I have since been told, another Leather- 
stocking tale, deeming that he had not yet exhausted the 
character, and those who consider what new resources it 
yielded him in the Pathfinder and the Deerslayer, will readily 
conclude that he was not mistaken. 

The disease, however, by which he was removed, was even 
then impending over him, and not long afterAvards his friends 
here were grieved to learn that his health was declining. He 
came to New York so changed that they looked at him with 
sorrow, and after a stay of some weeks, partly for the benefit 
of medical advice, returned to Cooperstown, to leave it no 
more. His complaint gradually gained strength, subdued a 
constitution originally robust, and finally passed into a con- 
firmed dropsy. In August, 1851, he Avas visited by his ex- 
cellent and learned friend, Dr. Francis, a member of the 
weekly club which he had founded in the early part of his lit- 
erary career. He found him bearing the sufferings of his dis- 
ease with manly firmness, gave him such medical counsels as 
the malady appeared to require, prepared him delicately for 
its fatal termination, and returned to New York Avith the most 
melancholy anticipations. In a few days afterwards, Cooper 
expired, amid the deep affliction of his family, on the 14th of 
September, the day before that on which he should have com- 
pleted his sixty-second year. He died, apparently without 
pain, in peace and religious hope. The relations of man to his 
Maker, and to that state of being for which the present is 
but a preparation, had occupied much of his thoughts du- 
ring his whole lifetime, and he crossed, with a serene com- 



w . c . Bryant's discourse. 69 

posure, the mysterious boundary -which divides this life from 
the next. 

The departure of such a man, in the full strength of his 
faculties, — on whom the country had for thirty years looked 
as one of the permanent ornaments of its literature, and whose 
name had been so often associated with praise, with renown, 
with controversy, with blame, but never wath death, — diffused 
a univei'sal awe. It was as if an earthquake had shaken the 
ground on which we stood, and showed the grave opening by 
our path. In the general grief for his loss, his virtues only 
were remembered, and his fellings forgotten. 

Of his failings I have said little ; such as he had were 
obvious to all the world ; they lay on the surface of his char- 
acter ; those who knew him least made the most account of 
them. With a character so made up of positive qualities — a 
character so independent and uncompromising, and with a sen- , 
sitiveness far more acute than he was willing to acknowledge, 
it is not surprising that occasions frequently arose to bring 
him, sometimes into friendly collision, and sometimes into 
graver disagreements and misunderstandings with his fellow- 
men. For his infirmities, his friends found an ample coimter- 
poise in the generous sincerity of his nature. lie never 
thought of disguising his opinions, and he abhorred all disguise 
in others ; he did not even deign to use that show of regard 
towards those of whom he did not think well, which the world 
tolerates, and almost demands. A manly expression of opin- 
ion, however different from his own, commanded his respect. 
Of his own works, he spoke with the same freedom as of the 
works of others; and never hesitated to express his judgment 
of a book for the reason that it was written by himself; yet 



70 THE MEMORY OF COOPER. 

he could bear with gentleness any dissent from the estimate 
he placed on his own writings. His character was like the 
bark of the cinnamon, a rough and astringent rind without, 
and an intense sweetness within. Those who penetrated be- 
low the surface found a genial temper, warm affections, and a 
heart with ample place for his friends, their pursuits, their 
good name, their welfare. They found him a philanthropist, 
though not precisely after the fashion of the day ; a religious 
man, most devout where devotion is most apt to be a feelmg 
rather than a custom, in the household circle ; hospitable, and 
to the extent of his means, liberal-handed in acts of charity. 
They found, also, that though in general he would as soon have 
thought of giving uj) an old friend as of giving up an opinion, 
he was not proof against testimony, and could part with a mis- 
taken opinion as one parts with an old fi'iend who has been 
proved faithless and unworthy. In short. Cooper was one of 
those who, to be loved, must be intimately known. 

Of his literary character I have spoken largely in the nar- 
rative of his life, but there are yet one or two remarks which 
must be made to do it justice, hi that way of writing in 
which he excelled, it seems to me that he united, in a pre-em- 
inent degree, those qualities which enabled him to interest the 
largest number of readers. He wrote not for the fastidious, 
the over-refined, the morbidly delicate ; for these find in his 
genius somethmg too robust for their liking — somethmg by 
which their sensibilities are too rudely shaken ; but he wrote 
for mankind at large — for men and women in the ordinary 
healthful state of feeling — and in their admiration he found 
his reward. It is for this class that public libraries are 
obliged to provide themselves with an extraordinary number 



w. c. Bryant's discourse. 71 

of copies of his works : the number in the Mercantile Library, 
in this city, I am told, is forty. Hence it is, that he has earned 
a fame, wider, I think, than any author of modern times — 
wider, certainly, than any author, of any age, ever enjoyed in 
his lifetime. All his excellences are translatable — they j)ass 
readily into languages the least allied ui their genius to that 
in which he wTote, and in them he touches the heart and kin- 
dles the imagination with the same power as in the original 
English. 

Cooper was not wholly without humour ; it is sometimes 
found lurking in the dialogue of Harvey Birch, and of Leather- 
stockmg : but it forms no considerable element in his works : 
and if it did, it would have stood in the way of his universal 
popularity, suice, of all qualities, it is the most difficult to 
transfuse into a foreign language. Nor did the effect he pro- 
duced upon the reader depend on any grace of style which 
would escape a translator of ordinary skill. With liis style, 
it is true, he took great pains, and in his earlier works, I am 
told, sometimes altered the proofs sent from the prmter so 
largely that they might be said to be written over. Yet hd^ 
attained no special felicity, variety, or compass of expression. 
His style, however, answered his purpose ; it has defects, but 
it is manly and clear, and stamps on the mind of the reader^ 
the impression he desired to convey. I am not sure that 
some of the very defects of Cooper's novels do not add, by a 
certam force of contrast, to their power over the mind. He 
is long in getting at the interest of his narrative. The prog- 
ress of the plot, at first, is like that of one of his own vessels 
of war, slowly, heavily, and even awkwardly working out of 
a harbour. We are impatient and weary, but when the ves- 



72 THE MEMORY OF COOPER. 

sel is once in the open sea, and feels the free breath of heaven 
in her full sheets, our delight and admiration is all the greater 
at the grace, the majesty and power with which she divides 
and bears down the waves, and pursues her course, at will, 
over the great waste of waters. 

Such are the works so widely read, and so universally 
admired, in all the zones of the globe, and by men of every 
kindred and every tongue ; works which have made of those 
who dwell in remote latitudes, wanderers m our forests, and 
observers of our manners, and have inspired them with an 
interest in our history. A gentleman who had returned from 
Europe just before the death of Cooper, was asked what he 
found the people of the Continent doing. " Tliey are all read- 
ing Cooper," he answered ; " in the little kingdom of Holland, 
with its three millions of inhabitants, I looked into four differ- 
ent translations of Cooper in the language of the country." 
A traveller, who has seen much of the middle classes of Italy, 
lately said to me, " I found that all they knew of America, 
and that was not little, they had learned from Cooper's 
novels ; from him they had learned the story of American 
liberty, and through him they had been introduced to our 
Washuigton ; they had read his works till the shores of the 
Hudson and the valleys of Westchester, and the banks of 
Otsego lake had become to them familiar ground." 

Over all the countries into whose speech this great man's 
works have been rendered by the labours of their scholars, 
the sorrow of that loss Avhich we deplore is now diffusing 
itself. Here we lament the ornament of our country, there 
they mourn the death of him who delighted the human race. 
Even now, while I speak, the pulse of grief which is passing 



w. c. BR v ant's discourse. 73 

through the nations has haply just reached some remote 
neighbourhood ; the news of his death has been brought to 
some dwelling on the slopes of the Andes, or amidst the 
snowy wastos of the North, and the dark-eyed damsel of Chile, 
or the fair-haired maid of Norway, is sad to think that he 
whose stories of heroism and true love have so often kept her 
for hours from her pillow, lives no more. 

He is gone ! but the creations of his genius, fixed in living 
words, survive the frail material organs by which the words 
were first traced. They partake of a middle nature, between 
the deathless mind and the decaying body of which they 
are the common offspring, and are, therefore, destined to 
a duration, if not eternal, yet indefinite. The examples 
he has given in his glorious fictions, of heroism, honour 
and truth, of large sympathies between man and man, of all 
that is good, great, and excellent, embodied in personages 
marked with so strong an mdividuality that we place them 
among our friends and favourites ; his frank and generous 
men, his gentle and noble women, shall live through centuries 
to come, and only perish with our language. I have said with 
our language ; but who shall say when it may be the fate of 
the English language to be numbered with the extinct forms 
of human speech 1 Who shall declare which of the present 
tongues of the civilized world will survive its fellows 1 It 
may be that some one of them, more fortunate than the rest, 
will long outlast them, in some undisturbed quarter of the 
globe, and in the midst of a new civilization. The creations 
of Cooper's genius, even now transferred to that language, 
may remain to be the delight of the nations through another 
great cycle of centuries, beginning after the English language 



74 THE MEMORY OF COOPER. 

and its contemporaneous form of civilization shall have passed 
away. 

Mr. Bancroft rose, at the invitation of the President, to 
return thanks, on behalf of the Committee, to Mr., Bryant. 
He spoke as follows : 

Ladies and Gentlemen : — The President has assigned to me 
the agreeable duty of rendering, on behalf of the Committee, 
their thanks to Mr. Bryant, who to-night has so beautifully 
proved how one man of genius may do honour to another. 
The delight with which you have listened is better applause 
than any words of mine, and I am sure I give expression to the 
feelings of your hearts, when I make, on behalf of my asso- 
ciates, these expressions of their gratitude. But we owe him 
more ; he has made our effort successful. Your presence 
declares it is successful. 

The men of letters of New York, overwhelmed with grief 
at the death of their illustrious brother, met together to agree 
on some tribute to the genius of James Fenimore Cooper, 
and, on the suggestion of Mr. Irving, proposed to raise a 
monumental statue to his memory. 

We desire that this may be done here m New York, for 
Cooper was emphatically a son of New York, born in your 
vicinity, educated almost in your midst, receiving his inspira- 
tions among you, pursuing his career among you, trusting to 
you for that blame and that praise, without which there is no 
literary success. His ca,reer belongs emphatically and pecu- 
liarly to New York. New York, too, is his by conquest ; for 
what is your domain? Tlie ocean. No steamships plough 
the waves of the Atlantic so swiftly as those which go out of 



MR. BANCROFTS S I' E E C II . 75 

your harbour; tlic ships which you send round tho globe 
have now attained such mastery over the winds and the cur- 
rents of the ocean, that theii* commg back into your harbour 
may be predicted almost to a day with as much certainty as 
the return of the seasons. Cooper, too, is at home upon the 
deep. No man lilce him has so commemorated the gallant 
deeds of our navy — no man like him has so described life on 
the ocean. 

There is another reason why we call upon you for vour 
sympathy and co-operation in our purpose. Do not think that j 
we come to speak to you for the men of letters who come i 
after him — no, we speak only for him, the first great American 
man of letters who has passed from amongst us. He was a 
forerunner, — one of the very few who, at long distances from 
one another, went before us. The universality of education 
among us, the wide diffusion of the opportunities of instruc- 
tion, the quick kindling impulses of the young, their enterprise, 
love of admiration, love of truth, and of science — all will 
combine to make the class of those who are engaged in the 
pursuits of science and letters greater in America than they 
have ever been in any other country in the world, in propor- 
tion to its numbers. I give this, not as my own idea, but as a 
lesson which I learned of the illustrious Madison, who loved 
the pursuits of a scholar more than any other occupation of 
life, and himself achieved high distinction as a man of letters ; 
as has been done by the statesman who to-night presides over 
this meeting, and who on several occasions has in his ^\Titiugs 
given expression to the thoughts and feelings of his country in 
such massive English as no one but himself could I'ival. The 
men of letters of the coming generations, and the men of let- 



76 THE MEMORY OF COOPER. 

ters who now live, must consent to stand close together, like 
trees in the densest forest; but Cooper dwelt, as it were, 
alone on one of his own prairies. He was the first to people 
the realms of the mterior of the country with the creatures of 
imagmation. He was, as it were, the first to tell how the 
Hudson flows with inspiration to the poet ; and henceforward 
the traveller who looks at the beauties of Glen Falls will see 
the people of the fictions of Cooper gather around him among 
the spray and the rocks ; or if, on the banks of Lake George, 
he looks out on the gorgeous scenes which the decline of the 
sun presents to him, he will find the richest hues of evenmg 
made yet more beautiful by the presence of the creations with 
which the fancy of Cooper has environed them. While we, 
then, stand crowded together, we direct your attention to 
Cooper, rising like the stately and solitary oak on the plain, 
without a rival or a neighbour. 

There is another reason, the Committee instruct me to state, 
why we call on you to erect a statue to Cooper : it is from 
respect for the genuine sincerity and integrity of his character ; 
it is that he sincerely loved truth and honestly pursued its 
dictates ; that he never truckled to any temporary passion or 
social influence, but pursued his own career, as if he feared 
not to guide his bark over the stormy waves of competition, 
straight onward towards his end. It is from the profound 
and deep conviction of the vigorous character of his intellect, 
the purity of his life and heart, and the manly genuineness of 
his piety, that we invite you to join in buildmg a monument 
which shall hold him up as an example to the young. 

We ask you, for a moment, to forget the care, the ambi- 
tion, the brilliant successes, and overflowing prosperity of the 



REV. MR. OSGOODS SPEECH. it 

day, and to live "witli us iu the past. This 1)eautitul and hos- 
pitable city should be the chosen home of men of letters. 
Here by the ocean side — here where there is easy connection 
with all the world — this commercial metropolis should be, as 
it were, the eye to our country, as Athens was to Greece, and 
should rival that city in respect for the arts, for science, for 
truth, and for whatever contributes to ennoble and dignify 
humanity. And therefore it is that we have asked you for a 
few moments to forget the shadows of the present, and to 
gaze with us on the realities of eternity — to pass from the 
contests of to-day, and to join in doing honour to him whose 
great career is already brought to a close. 

Ladies and gentlemen, In your presence, in your sympa- 
thies, we read your approbation of our design, and in that 
approbation we find a sure omen of success. 

]Mr. Bancroft's speech was received with enthusiastic 
cheers, and on its conclusion Mr. Webster rose and shook 
hands with him, amid renewed applause. The Rev. Samuel 
Osgood being then called upon, came forward and said : 

I am very sorry, Mr. President, to say m this assembly 
what in sincerity I am obliged to say. This is not the place 
lor me, and when asked but a few minutes since to address 
the audience, I positively declined, and your call takes me 
wholly by surprise. We have met together this evening to 
commemorate the services of a great mind m our republic of 
letters, and to men of historical position, his own peers in hon- 
our, these tributes to his memory had, I supposed, been en- 
trusted. Among such personages I have no claim to stand, and 
my word, rather of apology than of speech, is presumptuous, 



78 THE MEMORY or COOPER. 

unless I take my place as one of the audience and speak as 
if for them. 

One thought here forces itself upon the hearer which needs 
no studied words to give it expression. After what we have 
seen and heard to-night, how can we but speak our gratitude 
to the leaders of our national literature brought so near 
to us now by the faces of the living, and the memory of the 
dead ? Honour — all honours to our chiefs in romance, poetry, 
history, oratory, especially to such as have adorned the stern 
utilities of our country by the charms of pure taste and high 
imagination. We are and have been from the first a practi- 
cal people — too much taken up with the difficulties of our ma- 
terial position to find much time or thought for the beautiful 
arts. Most of us personally have been obliged to struggle 
for the means of livelihood and the opportunities of education. 
Sons of farmers and mechanics, and of men of like hardy lot, 
we have not been framed m exquisite tastes, or breathed 
an atmosphere of Attic refuiement. But, sir, we hear, and 
always have heard, the voice divine that calls us to follow a 
noble aim in all our strivings, and see a lofty ideal in the midst 
of our sternest labours, "We as a people have not been want- 
ing in imagination, few as our achievements may have been in 
the arts usually called imaginative. Our destmed material 
thus far has not been the marble or the canvass, nor have we 
put all our aspiration into poetry and romance. But the 
ideal is in us, and it must come out. It is working itself out in 
the whole energy of a people now starting into a great and 
progressive nation, and making to themselves history and 
romance out of their very growth. Honour to the illustrious 
man whose name crowns tliis festival — honour to him as an 



REV. MR. Osgood's speech. 79 

educator of the popular fancy, giving such beauty to true 
heroism, and adorning the sturdy virtues of our fathers with 
the finest graces of the affections. Honour to him for what 
he has expressed, and for what he implied. His stories of 
adventure, his jjortraitures of rude energy struggling upwards 
into refuiement and aspiration, are good emblems of the better 
spirit of our people — cheering promises of the time when our 
plam utilities shall open mto beauty, even as our rough soil 
blooms into loveliness and fragrance. But a begimiing has 
been made, and it is noble enough to promise an august ca- 
reer in all the arts that refme and elevate a nation. We have 
been Avorking out our mind in the hard school of necessity. 
We have blocked e)ut the statue thus far but in the rough, 
and what it shall be, we hardly dare to tell. Yet form and 
features have begun to show themselves ; ere long the polish 
will come, and the Eternal Spirit of Beauty will not refuse its 
fire, nor fail to inform it with a celestial soul. 

I am surprised to fuid myself speaking here to-night. 
More words I could add, were it not that the office belongs 
more fitly far to others of historic name ; and I must close 
with a single thought : — It is good to be here at our great 
author's obsequies. It is good to meet on the high and com- 
mon groimd of allegiance to what is best in letters, far away 
from party strifes and vulgar cares. Let us carry a worthy 
lesson with us from this place. We celebrate now the ser- 
vices of a man pure m life as j^owerful in word. As we, his 
friends, meet together, we are as those who bore their 
torches at a hero's obsequies reversed, to ultimate how great 
a light has been extinguished. We will be content to bear 
them so until this hour closes, but then lift them bravely 



80 THE MEMORY OF COOPER. 

aloft; let solemn memories rise into cheerful hopes; let 
droopmg regrets start up into exalted purposes. Fidelity is 
the best tribute to the faithful. A life pure, generous, Chris- 
tian, true to God and man, is the noblest history, the most 
winning romance, the di\anest poem. 

The President then called on the Rev. Dr. Bethune, who 
come forward amid the most cordial demonstrations of satis- 
faction by the assembly, and said : 

Apologies at such a time are, I am aware, Mr. Presiaent, 
seldom in good taste ; yet, lest the rough form of my few 
remarks should appear disrespectful to the audience, I must 
say that I did not suppose you would call on me this evening. 
Many weeks since, when this meetmg was first proposed, the 
GDmmittee of Arrangements did me the honour of asking that 
I should say a few words, which my sincere admiration for the 
character and services of the great man who has gone from 
among us, would not allow me to refuse ; but, learning that so 
many far better qualified were to be here to-night, I scarcely 
expected to be thought of Still, sir, it is the duty of every 
man promptly to obey constituted authority, and I may not 
hesitate. 

The eloquent gentleman, who has just addressed you, said 
that we had met to " celebrate the obsequies" of him who has 
been in all our thoughts. Pardon me for dissentmg from the 
expression. We have met to congratulate his spirit on ife 
immortality. We are not permitted to look within the mys- 
terious veil which divides time from eternity, or follow hinti 
before the presence of God ; but we know that he died in firm 
faith upon the Son of God, our Redeemer, the only " way and 



REV. DR. BETHUNe's SPEECH. 



81 



truth and life" by whom we can " come unto the Father." In 
those almighty, just, and merciful hands we can leave him ; 
but, while we mourn the departure of liis generous works on 
earth, it is our comfort and joy to know that his mind lives 
fur us and for all posterity m his imperishable pages. If we 
may not hear fresh oracles of wisdom and truth from his once 
indefatigable pen, those which he has uttered remain with us 
ever precious and affectionately cherished. It is now our de- 
sire to erect a memorial of our gratitude for so rich a legacy. 
The fame of Cooper needs no artificial monument ; with his 
own hand has he engraved it on the magic scenery of our 
country, and interwoven it with the legends of our liistory : 



" Call it not vain ; they do not err, 

Who say, that, when a poet dies, 
Mute nature mourns her worshipper 

And celebrates his obsequies ; 
Who say, tall cliff and cavern lone 
For the departed bard make moan; 
That mountains weep in crystal rill ; 
And flowers in tears of balm distill ; 
Through his loved groves the breezes sigh, 
And oaks in deeper groans reply ; 
And rivers teach their rushing wave 
To murmur dirges round his grave. 

" Not that, in sooth, o'er mortal urn 
Such things inanimate can mourn ; 
But that the stream, the wood, the gale 
Is vocal with the plaintive wail 
Of those, who, else forgotten long. 
Live in the poet's faithful song. 
And, in the poet's parting breath, 
Whose memory feels a second death." 

Our Cooper was not a poet m the melody of rhythm or the 
responses of rhyme, but eminently one in the faculty of 

4* 



82 THE MEMORY OF COOPER. 

thi'owing the charms of imagination around rugged realities, 
and of elevatmg the soul with noble sentiments. Who with 
any sense of poetry could read the " Prairie" and not feel 
that he was entranced by a j^oet's spell ! He was a true 
poet, and, if we had the spiritual perception of him whose lines 
[ have just repeated, we should be conscious of a mourn- 
ful moan from out the rocky cliffs of the Hudson, answered by 
the sighmg of its sad waves along the shores illustrated by his 
genius. There is scarcely a portion of our land, or scene of 
our best history, or field of the ocean cut by an American 
keel, which does not bear testimony to his graphic truth. But. 
sir, how dare I attemjit his eulogy, after his memory has been 
crowned this night by the classic hand of him, whom all of us 
acknowledge the foremost representative of American poetry, 
before an assembly of our citizens unparalleled for its combi- 
nation of numbers, intelligence, and moral worth, presided 
over — pardon me, sir, I would fain avoid the excess of umie- 
cessary compliment, but when I use the briefest term must 
pay the greatest — presided over by yourself ! 

My friend Mr. Bancroft has said, (I cannot repeat his happy 
language, but will reach his thought,) that we are not here to 
honour " other men of letters," the worthy compeers of their 
deceased brother ; but I come out from this assembled senate 
of authors (among whom I have lawfully no place) to speak as 
one of the people, and say that we are assembled for their 
honour as well as his. We are met to assure those eminent 
men, who give us the wise lessons of our history, ennoble our 
thoughts by the highest flights of song, and charm us with 
ethics in the pure strength of our Saxon tongue made graceful 
and tender through the inspiration of an exij^uisite sensibility, 



REV, DR. B E T II U N E ' S SPEECH. 83 

that \vc are not ungi'ateful for the high benefits which the 
Father of lights confers upon us in their devoted services. 
This is the occasion for a precedent of admiring justice to 
our men of commanding and generous intellect. It is a sad 
thought, which can be relieved only by the faith that the rec- 
ords of genius are imperishable — but the pi-esent reality forces 
it upon us — the men whom we are this night happy to look 
•upon, whose voice and pen are even now contributing their 
efforts for our delight and profit, must soon pass away. We 
must have the satisfaction of assurmg them by the honour we 
pay to the memory of their first-born, first-departed brother, 
that, when they are gone, they shall not be forgotten. No, 
gentlemen ; (bowing to Messrs. Bryant, Bancroft, and Irvuig ;) 
go on m the noble career for which Providence has fitted you, — 
add hourly to the uiestimable treasures already bestowed by 
your hands upon your coimtrymen and the world ; and if you 
need a motive beyond your own self-gratifymg love of doing 
good, be assured that when you [vos quoque morituri) have left 
us, we, who now cover with tributary laurels the brow of 
Cooper, will follow your ashes with fond and loyal recol- 
lections. 

Yet our thanks should not be expended in "winged 
words," but for the sake of posterity and the mass of our 
compatriot peoj^le, embodied in some enduring, public 
shape. Arts are kindred ; and among the best uses to 
which those which imitate the visible works of the Creator 
can be devoted, is the preservation of their form and features 
who have been benefactors of their country and mankmd. 
Therefore would we, and our purpose shall not fail, erect such 
a monument to the honour of this great and good man, the 



84 THE MEMORY OF COOPER. 

first, I trust, of a long series, which shall commemorate his 
contemporaries and successors in like dignity. We could not 
fliil to note, as the orator of the evening, in simple and elegant 
panegyric, traced the long catalogue of our Cooper's writmgs, 
that those which most concerned the history and scenes of 
his native land and ours, were most appreciated and effi- 
cient. The classical nations of antiquity deemed the fame of 
a hero or a sage not complete until they had inaugurated his 
statue. The capitals of modern Europe are crowded with 
such endurmg presentments of those whom kings delight to 
honour as mstruments of despotism, or for whom the people 
are permitted to testify esteem as friends of humanity. There 
is scarcely a town, however small, without one or more 
statues of the dead in its open squares. But, many as are 
the illustrious of our amials, you may look throughout our 
whole land, and (with some insignificant exceptions) discover 
no proofs that we can appreciate public services. Let us, 
then, invoke the Genius of Sculpture, whose presence among 
us is so amply certified, to pourtray for the eyes of our people 
and their children the lineaments of that form and face wliich, 
when living, were animated by the patriotic and zealous spirit 
of Cooper. Let it be placed, not in a hall of learning, or in 
a retreat of the few, but in the free common air and simliffht, 
where all may look upon it, and learn fresh gratitude, and 
gain fresh mcentives to pursuits so honourable and so hon- 
oured. "We have been told that his voice is now heard in 
every civilized tongue, and we know, wherever it speaks, it 
tells the story of our national dignity, and teaches the maxims 
of political ^visdom and honesty which have raised us to our 
unexampled prosperity. Such are the best contributions we 



MR. James's SPEECH. 85 

can make to the freedom of oppressed countries ; because they 
show that, without a popular love of justice and union, arms 
and blood are powerless to achieve liberty. The world has 
admired our Cooper as a man of genius ; let them see that his 
countrymen love him as a wise champion of political truth, 
and a faithful citizen. Without love, which our God has 
ordained to be the sole sufficient spring of all duty, virtue is 
but a name ; and without patriotism, (the scoff of knaves, 
but the admiration of the good,) our citizenship will be hypoc- 
risy. Let us cherish this grand virtue ; let us teach it to pos- 
terity ; and, by public respect to the memory of those, who, 
like Cooper, have served earnestly under the institutions 
which educated them, conserve our self-respect, and show our 
thankfulness for our wide, rich land, our unequalled constitu- 
tion, and the union of these States, the bond of their security. 

Mr. Webster next mtroduced Mr. G. P. R. James, who 
was received with loud and contmued cheers. He spoke as 
follows : 

Ladies and Gentlemen : — It is only this very moment that 
I have had the first intimation that I would be called ujjon to 
address you. But it is not for me, an Englishman — and 
bemg proud of being an Englishman — it is not for me, a 
romance -WTiter — and proud to be a romance writer — ^it is not 
for me, a man of the people — and proud to be a man of the 
people — to refuse my humble tribute to an American ro- 
mance writer, and a man of the people. But all that I 
could have said has been taken from me by the speakers 
who preceded me. What can I add after the speeches 
of such men as the President of this assembly, of my 



86 THE MEMORY OF COOPER. 

honourable friend Mr, Bancroft, and of the reverend gen- 
tlemen who have addressed you, and after the oration of 
Mr. Bryant himself? What can I say after the language of 
him whose massy eloquence, like the wi-itings of him whose 
memory we have met to commemorate, have gone all 
over the civilized world ? Little has been left to me but to 
correct a mistake relative to a person of the same name as 
my own. In alluding to Mr. James, as an opponent of Mr, 
Cooper, Mr. Bryant called him a veterinary surgeon. That 
gentleman was no connection of mine, and I never saw him ; 
but I know he was not a veterinary, but a naval surgeon, and 
the two professions cannot be combmed, unless by that pe- 
culiar animal called a "horse marme." Another motive I 
had in respondmg to your call, was to add my tribute to an 
AmcricMi author, and upon this point little is left me to 
say. I am only like a judge at the end of a trial, when ad- 
dressing the jury after the witnesses have been all exammed ; 
though I do not pretend to be much of a judge in literature. 
I will, however, sum up as best I can ; and I ask, to what 
is it that you are about to erect a statue? Is it simply 
to a novelist? No, no, no — far more than that. It is to 
genius, whose triumphs are as far superior to those of the 
military man, as mind is superior to matter — as the power 
that can sway millions is to that which can slay hundreds of 
thousands. But is this all ? No ! far from it. It is a statue 
to truth — straightforward truth — truth, worthy of more stat^ 
ues than were ever raised to it. Is it to truth alone ? No ; 
but to truth, genius, and patriotism combined. I say he 
was a patriot in the fullest sense of the word, for, though 
he spent a considerable part of his life out of tliis great 



DR. Francis's speech. 87 

land, he was every where an American— true to his country, 
and true to himself. With this summing up, I would ask if 
there is any man or any woman (and woman's voice is more 
powerful to plead than man's)— I would ask, is there any 
(.ne who leaves this hall to-night who will not contribute, 
nay, who will not use every exertion to procure contribu- 
tions from their friends and neighbours, to erect a statue 
that will go down to posterity as a testimony of your rever- 
ence for genius, truth, and patriotism 1 

On the conclusion of Mr. James's speech, Mr. Webster 
said, I perceive among the gentlemen around me, the familiar 
face of an old friend, who was personally well acquainted 
with Mr. Cooper, and was, I believe, his physician : will Dr. 
Francis offer any remarks on the subject of this evening's 
consideration 1 

Dr. Francis said, I did not expect, Mr. President, to be 
called upon this evening to say any thmg in behalf of the 
measures which the Committee contemplate in honour of the 
memory of INIr, Cooper. But I am fortified m the attempt to 
say a word or two on the subject, in being requested by high 
authority, and a knowledge that the call is constitutional. 
Ladies and gentlemen, the learned President has correctly in. 
formed you that I was an early friend of Fenimore Cooper. 
It is more than thirty years since I first became acquainted 
with him. I have seen him in the private room, in the public 
hall, and at the meetings of the many ; I have seen him in the 
highest flights of his genius, at the table where numerous 
friends were convened together ; I have heard him converse 
on national affairs, and descant upon the literature of his 



88 THE MEMORY OF COOPEK. 

country ; have listened to his disquisitions on that monster of 
the ocean, the Kraken, and dwell, with the enthusiasm of old 
Walton, on trout-fishing, and the Otsego bass. I, therefore, 
believe I have been tolerably well acquainted with Mr. 
Cooj)er, and I do not think that the gentlemen who have hon- 
oured us with their observations this evening, have in the least 
degree erred in what they have said concerning his talents, his 
patriotism, his disinterestedness, his love of truth, or any of 
the great qualities that made up his character ; and I will add, 
that m the course of a long life, I have never known! any gen- 
tleman more intrej^id, more self-possessed, or more honoura- 
ble in all his dealings. The Committee of his friends will, I 
hope, be able to erect a suitable monument to him. 

Besides his great abilities, he was also a friend to true 
Christianity. One of his leading maxims in life was, that 
fiscal integrity was a brilliant jewel in the coronet of the 
Christian professor. He was well aware, during his sickness, 
of his approaching end ; but then he had the consolation of 
knowing that he had never, through life, wTittcn one line 
which he would wish to blot. I believe that principles of a 
more elevated and genuine morality cannot be found in all 
the pages of literature, than in those of James Fenimore 
Cooper. There was no compromise, no half-and-half way with 
him ; all was truthful and sternly honest. It was his love of 
honesty that caused me to admire him. To the Christian 
world I may say, he was much engaged in studies of a re- 
ligious nature ; he was not merely a novelist, a writer of 
naval history, and of biography, but he was also a theologian, 
and wrote on theological subjects with extraordinary talent 
and erudition. He was imbued with polemical controversy ; 



DR. FRANCIS'S SPEECH. 89 

he had read the (jld divines, and was acquainted with the his- 
tory of religious creeds ; he knew the bearings of 2:)olitical 
and religious institutions ; he was connected with the Protest- 
ant Episcopal Church, and he died in the full belief of a future 
state and of the Christian dispensation. I mention these 
things, that there may not be a doubt on the minds of the 
people in relation to the character of our late friend. I am 
gratified with all I have heard to-night; this is the highest 
compliment he could receive, and half-a-dozen times it has 
crossed my mind, Would it be jiossilile to find such an en- 
lightened body, so large a mass of intelligence and respecta- 
bility, to give honour to any but a most truly great man 1 

During my sojourn abroad, I met, hj accident, a young 
Englishman, who, having learned that I was an American, in- 
formed me that he had travelled quite extensively through 
the States. " A great country, indeed, sir," added he, " but 
what has most struck me is, that I have not found in all your 
land a single conspicuous memorial of the dead ; you have 
no galleries of paintings, no columns, no statues ; you have 
no Westminster Abbey for the repose of illustrious characters. 
I suppose, however, that with your rapid progress this de- 
fect will in time be remedied, at least when you can boast of 
having produced great men." As he uttered half truth, I 
made no reply ; my feelings were mortified. Our friend on 
my right, the distmguished novelist, Mr. James, too, lately told 
us in a public address, that he had in vain during his exten- 
sive travels through our country, cast his eyes about for any 
tablet or statue commemorative of our Franklin, the Ameri- 
can Solon. The painfiil truth perpetually strikes us, that we 
have Vjeen negligent in the extreme of a proper reverence for 



90 THE MEMORY OF COOPER. 

the memories of the noble sons of our soil ; and I may add, 
in confirmation of this debasing fact, that perhaps of the 
whole audience now assembled in this hall, so interested this 
night in our proceedings, so cultivated and so refined m their 
characters, scarcely half-a-dozen can be found who are able 
to tell us where repose the mortal remains of our illustrious 
Fulton ! With what eloquence, in behalf of the present 
undertaking of the Committee, do these circumstances plead ! 
and how earnestly should we labour to remove such a re- 
proach from our history ! 

I think I see in your countenances a desire to co-operate in 
this honourable work : the majority of you are of ripe years, 
and you and your children are familiar mth the writings of 
Cooper ; have been edified by liis etliics, led captive by his 
imagination, and instructed by his truthful and admirably con. 
structed narratives ; and what adds to the charm of his literary 
productions is, that you obtain from their perusal so just an 
impression of the moral attributes, the rectitude, and the 
philosophy of the author himself. You are not called upon 
to erect an altar to an " unknown god ;" you are asked to 
present an enduring recognition of the vast excellencies of a 
native citizen, who, in the fullest acceptation of language, was 
a benefactor to his country. To be laggard in such an enter- 
prise, in this age of moral and intellectual progress, when 
man, by every laudable means, is daily assertmg the dignity 
of his nature, w^hen the wTitten page exhibits a virtue unknown 
in former times, when we talk by lightnmg, print by the 
steam-engme, and paint by the sunbeam, were indeed a ne- 
glect to admit of no extenuation. You are, therefore, with a 
perfect knowledge of the Committee's \-iews, enabled to ap- 



UK. Francis's speech. 91 

preciate the semces you render to the patriotic design of 
erecting, in some public square in this metropolis, a becoming 
monument to his memory. Let this be done with all conve- 
nient speed ; let the sculptor now do what many pens have 
already done — add, from his art, the expression of heart-felt 
gratitude for the true life and pure fiime of the illustrious and 
noble deceased ; so that posterity may behold the efficacy of 
your faith, in the demonstration that shall promptly be made, 
in response to your liberality. 

I rejoice at the aspect the affiiir has taken, in its origin 
among tts. I want New York to be first in every thing. I 
want this glorious city to exalt herself in arts and in lit- 
erature, as she has in commerce, in patriotism, in devotion 
to the Union of the States. I love the East, because it 
produced Mr. Webster ; I love the West, because it pro- 
duced Henry Clay ; and I might go on in this manner, 
and refer to various parts of our country for which I have 
also a wonderful liking ; but above all I love my native 
New York. Her history is replete with deeds of daring. 
So early as 1765, during her colonial vassalage, liberty 
.and the rights of man commanded her energies in council ; 
and she delights to be in advance in generous measures, 
whenever the occasion demands it. 'Tis but as yesterday 
that one of her enlightened citizens, by his o-\\ni private 
munificence, carried out the Arctic Polar Expedition, in 
search of the long-lost Capt. Sir John Franklm ; and I 
am told to-day, that the great project, by the same distin- 
guished individual, is to be forthwith renewed. Fenimore 
Cooper is among her fiimous sons, to the manor born ; and 
here you have an opportunity to take the first step for the 



92 THE M E M O K Y OF COOPER. 

erection of a monument to the great New York author. As 
he is among the fu-st of our literary men who have jDassed 
away, so also will this be the first measure to stamp our 
esteem of the merits of the literary character. God bless 
the undertaking ; may you go on to aid it further, nor desist 
till the goodly work is accomplished. 

Mr. Webstek closed the meeting with a short address. 
He remarked : 

It has been said with great truth by a profound philosopher, 
" Call no man happy till his death ;" and the reason I suppose 
is to Ije found in the vicissitudes of life, the changes of human 
feelmgs, and objects of human pursuit ; so that before the end 
of life arrives the character itself becomes changed — ^'■Jinis 
coronal opus.'''' — He, in honour of whose memory we are 
assembled, has accomplished his career of human existence ; 
"• after life's fitful fever he sleeps well." His character is ac- 
complished and remains itself a monument. The j^erturbations 
of life cannot aflTect him, and the question is, what of value has 
he left to his country ] 

You all remember the eloquent and ingenious funeral ora- 
tion of Mark Antony over the body of Julius Ci3esar. Antony 
presented M'hat he called the will of CsBsar, by which, as An- 
tony proclaimed, he made the Roman people his heirs. Giving 
to every man so many drachms, and to the whole 

" his walks, 

His private arbonrs, and new-planted orchards, 
On this side Tyber ; he hath left them you, 
And to your heirs for ever ; common pleasures 
To walk abroad, and recreate yourselves." 



M R . AV E B S T E R S S P E E C H . \Jo 

It would have been better if Ca3sar could ha^'c made a 
legacy to the Roman people of the example of a pure and 
spotless character. But the possessions which he left them 
were the result of war, conscription, and rapine ; they were 
wrung from oppressed provinces. Tliey were valuable, it is 
true, in themselves, but their origin was lawless, and their 
uses temporary and perishable. Could Cfcsar have bestowed 
on the Roman people ten times the wealth he possessed, 
what would it have been compared with the imperishable 
legacy left by men of letters to the country, or the works 
of art, sculpture, painting, and architecture wliich transmit, 
in a sort of visible shape, the mind of one age to that of 
the ages that come after it ? The productions of mind are 
imperishable while men remain civilized; and therefore it 
is that the reasoning of the understanding, the outpourings 
of the heart, and the creations of the intellect, exceed in 
value all the becjuests which it is in the power of all the 
kings of the earth to make. 

It is due to the memory of Fenimore Cooper, it is due to 
ourselves, it is due to the country, that we raise a monument 
of our gratitude to one who has left us an intellectual inherit- 
ance. 

Ladies and gentlemen, I now take leave of you and of an 
occasion which has devolved upon me the performance of a 
most agreeable duty. 



94 THE MEMORY OF COOPER. 



The foUowmg reminiscences of Mr. Cooper were ad- 
dressed to the Secretary of the Committee, by Dr. John W. 
Francis, LL. D. 

New York, October 1st, 1851. 
3fi/ Dear Sir : — I readily furnish you with such reminiscences of the 
late Mr. Cooper as occur to me, although the pressure of professional 
engagements absolutely forbids such details as I would gladly record. 
For nearly thirty years I have been the occasional medical adviser, and 
always the ardent personal friend of the illustrious deceased ; but our 
intercourse has been so fragmentary, owing to the distance we have 
lived apart, and the busy lives we have both led, that the impressions 
which now throng upon and impress me are desultory and varied, 
though endearing. I first knew Mr. Cooper in 1823. He at that time 
was recognized as the author of " Precaution," of " Tlie Spy," and of 
"The Pioneers." The two last-named works liad attracted especial 
notice by their widely-extended circulation, and the novelty of tlieir 
character in American literature. He was often to be seen at that 
period in conversation at the City Hotel in Broadway, near Old Trinity, 
where many of our most renowned naval and military men convened. 
He was the original projector of a literary and social association called 
the " Bread and Cheese Club," whose place of rendezvous was at 
Washington Hall. They met weekly in the evening, and furnished 
the occasion of much intellectual gratification and genial pleasure. 
That most adhesive friend, the poet Halleck, Chancellor Kent, G. C. 
Verplanck, Wiley, the publisher of Mr. Cooper's works, De Kay, the 
naturalist, C. A. Davis, (Jack Downing,) Charles King, now President 
of Columbia College, J. De Peyster Ogden, J. W. Jarvis, the painter, 
John and William Duer, and many others were of the confederacy. 
Washington Irving, at the period of the formation of this circle of 
friends, was in England, occupied with his inimitable " Sketch Book." 
I bad the honour of an early admittance to the Club. In balloting for 
membership the bread declared an affirmative ; and two ballots of 
cheese against an individual proclaimed non-admittance. 
• From the meetings of this society Mr. Cooper was rarely absent. 
When presiding officer of the evening, he attracted especial considera- 
tion from the richness of his anecdotes, his wide American knowledge, 
and his courteous behaviour. These meetings were often signally char- 



REMINISCENCES OF COOPEK. 95 

acterized by the number of invited guests of high reputation who 
gathered thither for recreative purposes, both of mind and body ; 
jurists of acknowledged eminence, governors of different states, sen- 
ators, members of the House of Representatives, literary men of foreign 
distinction, and authors of repute in our own land. It was gratifying 
to observe the dexterity with which Mr. Cooper would cope with some 
Eastern friend who contributed to our delight with a " Boston notion," 
or with Trelawny, the associate of Byron, descanting on Greece and the 
■■ Younger Son," or with any guests of the club, however dissimilar 
their habits or character ; accommodating his conversation and manners 
with the most marvellous facility. The New York attachments of Mr. 
Cooper were ever dominant. I witnessed a demonstration of the early 
enthusiasm and patriotic activity of our late friend in his efforts, witli 
many of our leading citizens, in getting up the Grand Castle Garden 
Ball, given in honour of Lafayette. The arrival of the " nation's guest" 
at New York, in 1824, was the occasion of the most joyful demonstra- 
tions, and the celebration was a splendid spectacle; it brought togetlier 
celebrities from many remote parts of the Union. Mr. Cooper must 
have undergone extraordinary fatigue during the day and following 
night ; but nearly as he was exhausted, he exhibited, when the public 
festivals were brought to a close, that astonishing readiness and skill in 
literary execution for which he was always so remarkable. Adjourn- 
ing near daybreak to the office of his friend Mr. Charles King, he wrote 
out more quickly than any other hand could copy, the very long and 
masterly report which next day appeared in Mr. King's paper — a report 
which conveyed to tens of thousands who had not been present, no 
inconsiderable portion of the enjoyment they had felt who were the 
immediate participants in this famous festival. The manly bearing, 
keen intelligence, and thoroughly honourable instincts of Mr. Cooper, 
united as they were with this gift of writing, — soon most effectively 
exhibited in his literary labours, now constantly increasing, — excited my 
highest expectations of his career as an author, and my sincere esteem 
for the man. There was a fresh promise, a vigorous impulse, and espe- 
cially an American enthusiasm about him, that seemed to indicate not 
only individual fame, but national honour. Since that period I have 
followed his brilliant course with no less of admiration than delight. 

It was to me a cause of deep regret that soon after his return from 
Europe, crowned with a distinct* and noble reputation, he became in- 
volved in a series of law-suits, growing out of libels, and originating, 
partly in his own impruileuce, and partly in tlie reckless severity of the 
press. But these are but temporary considerations in the retrospect of 



96 



THE MEMORY OF COOPER 



his achievements ; and, if I mistake not, in these difficulties he in every 
instance succeeded in gaining the verdict of the jury. It was a task 
insurmountable to overcome 2, fact as stated by Mr. Cooper. Associated 
as he was in my own mind witli the earliest triumphs of American let- 
ters, I think of him as the creator of the genuine nautical and forest 
romances of " Long Tom Coffin" and " Leatherstocking ;" as the illus- 
trator of our country's scenes and characters to the Europeans ; and not 
as the critic of our republican inconsistencies, or as a litigant with 
caustic editors. 

It is well known that for a long period Mr. Cooper, at occasional 
times only, visited New York city. His residence for many years was 
an elegant and quiet mansion on the southern borders of Otsego Lake. 
Here — in his beautiful retreat, embellished by the substantial fruits of 
his labours, and displaying every where his exquisite taste, his mind, ever 
intent on congenial tasks, which, alas ! are left unfinished, surrounded by 
a devoted and highly cultivated family, and maintaining the same clear- 
ness of perception, serene firmness, and integrity of tone, which distin- 
guished him in the meridian of his life — were his mental employments 
prosecuted. He lived chiefly in rural seclusion, and with habits of 
methodical industry. When visiting the city he mingled cordially with 
his old friends; and it was on the last occasion of this kind, at the 
beginning of April, that he consulted me with some earnestness in 
regard to his health. He complained of the impaired tone of the 
digestive organs, great torpor of the liver, weakness of muscular ac- 
tivity, and feebleness in walking. Such suggestions were offered for his 
relief as the indications of disease warranted. He left the city for his 
country residence, and I was gratified shortly after to learn from him 
of his better condition. 

During July and August I maintained a correspondence with him on 
the subject of his increasing physical infirmities, and frankly expressed 
to him the necessity of such remedial measures as seemed clearly neces- 
sary. Though occasionally relieved of my anxieties by the kind com- 
munications of his excellent friend and attending physician, Dr. Johnson, 
I was not without solicitude, both from his own statements as well as 
those of Dr. Johnson himself, that his disorder was on the increase ; 
certain symptoms were indeed mitigated, but the radical features of his 
illness had not been removed. A letter which I soon received induced 
me forthwith to repair to Cooperstown, and on the 27th of August I 
saw Mr. Cooper at his own dwelling. My reception was cordial. With 
his family about him, he related with great clearness the particulars of 
his sufferings, and the means of relief to which he was subjected. Dr. 



REMINISCENCES OF COOPER. 97 

Johnson was in consultation. I at once was struck with the heroic 
firmness of the sufferer, under an accumulation of depressing symptoms. 
His physical aspect was much altered from that noble freshness he was 
wont to bear; his complexion was pallid; his inferior extremities 
greatly enlarged by serous effusion ; his debility so extreme as to 
require an assistant for change of position in bed; his pulse sixty-four. 
There could be no doubt that the long-continued hepatic obstruction 
had led to confirmed dropsy, which, indeed, betrayed itself in several 
other parts of the body. Yet was he patient and collected. 'J'hat 
powerful intellect still held empire with commanding force, clearness, 
and vigour. I explained to him the nature of his malady; its natural 
termination when uncontrolled ; dwelt upon the favourable condition 
and yet regular action of the heart, and other vital functions, and the 
urgent necessity of endeavouring still more to fulfil certain indications, 
in order to overcome the force of particular tendencies in the disorder. 
I frankly assured him that within the limits of a week a change in the 
complaint was indispensable to lessen our forebodings of its ungovern- 
able nature. 

He listened with fixed attention ; and now and then threw out sug- 
gestions of cure such as are not unfrequent with cultivated minds. 

The great characteristics of his intellect were now even more con- 
spicuous than before. Not a murmur escaped his lips ; conviction of 
his extreme illness wrought no alteration of his features; he gave no 
expression of despondency ; his tone and his manner were equally dig- 
nified, cordial, and natural. It was his happiness to be blessed with a 
family around him whose greatest gratification was to supply his every 
want, and a daughter for a companion in his pursuits, who was his 
intelligent amanuensis and correspondent, as well as indefatigable 
nurse.* 

I forbear enlarging on matters too professional for present detail. 
During the night after my arrival he sustained an attack of severe faint- 
ing, which convinced me still further of his great personal weakness. 
An ennobling philosophy, however, gave him support, and in the morn- 
ing he had again been refreshed by a sleep of some few hours' duration. 
I renewed to him and to his family the hopes and the discouragements 
in his case. Never was information of so grave a cast received by any 
individual in a calmer spirit. He said little as to his prospects of re- 
covery. Upon my taking leave of him, however, shortly after, in the 
morning, I am convinced, from his manner, that he shared my apprehen- 

• The accomplished authoress of •' Rural Hours." 



98 THK MEMORY OF COOPER. 

sion of a fatal termination of his disorder. Nature, however strong in 
her gifted child, had now her healthful rights largely invaded. His 
constitutional buoyancy and determination, by leading him to slight 
that distant and thorough attention demanded by primary symptoms, 
doubtless contributed to their subsequent aggravation. 

I shall say but a few words more on this agonizing topic. The let- 
ters which I received, after my return home, communicated at times 
some cheering facts of renovation ; but, on the whole, discouraging 
demonstrations of augmenting illness and lessened hope, were their 
prominent characteristics. A letter to me from his son-in-law, of the 
14th of September, announced : " Mr. Cooper died, apparently without 
much pain, to-day at half past one, p. m., leaving his family, although 
prepared by his gradual failure, in deep affliction. He would have 
been sixty-two years old tomorrow." 

A life of such uniform and unparalleled excellence and service, a 
career so brilliant and honourable, closed in a befitting manner, and 
was crowned by a death of quiet resignation. Conscious of his ap- 
proaching dissolution, his intelligence seemed to glow with increased 
fullness as his prostrated frame yielded by degrees to the last summons. 
It is familiarly known to his most intimate friends, that for some consid- 
erable period prior to his fatal illness, he appropriated liberal portions 
of his time to the investigation of scriptural truths, and that his convic- 
»tions were ripe in Christian doctrines. With assurances of happiness 
• in the future, he graciously yielded up his spirit to the disposal of its 
Creator. His death, which must thus have been the beginning of a 
serene and more blessed life to him, is universally regarded as a national 
loss. 

Will you allow me to add a few words to this letter, a.reaay perhaps 
of undue extent. It has been my gratification, during a life of some 
duration, to have become personally acquainted with many eminent 
characters in the different walks of professional and literary avocation. 
I never knew an individual more thoroughly imbued with higher prin- 
ciples of action than Mr. Cooper : he acted upon principles, and fully 
comprehended the principles upon which he acted. Casual observers 
could scarcely, at times, understand and appreciate his motives or con- 
duct. An independence of character, worthy of the highest respect, 
and a natural boldness of temper, which led hira to a frank, emphatic, 
and intrepid utterance of his thoughts and sentiments, were uncongenial 
to that large class of people, who, from the want of moral courage, or 
a feeble physical temperament, habitually conform to public opinion, 
and endeavour to conciliate the world. Mr. Cooper was one of the 



REMINISCENCES OF CUOPEK. 99 

most genuine Americans in his tone of mind, in manly self-reliance, in 
sympathy with the scenery, the history, and the constitution of his 
country, which it has ever been my lot to know. His profession and 
his practice went hand in hand. He was American, inside and out : 
whether he discoursed with the 61ite at Holland House, London, or held 
converse with the hard-fisted democracy in the Park, New York, there 
was notliing tortuous in him. His genius was American, fresh, vigor- 
ous, independent, and devoted to native subjects. Tlie opposition he 
met with on his return from Europe, in consequence of his patriotic, 
though, perhaps, injudicious attempts to point out the faults and duties 
of his countrymen, threw him reluctantly on the defensive, and some- 
times gave an antagonistic manner to his intercourse; but whoever, 
recognizing his intellectual superiority, and respecting his integrity of 
purpose, met him candidly, in an open, cordial, and generous spirit, 
soon found in Mr. Cooper an honest man and a thorough patriot. 

It would constitute an article of interest to tlie lovers of dramatic 
literature and scenic illustration, to notice at some length the pleasure 
which Mr. Cooper experienced in these subjects, both as sources of in- 
tellectual gratification and mental improvement. His taste was fully 
awakened to the richest indulgence of the drama soon after the arrival 
of Edmund Kean, the great tragedian ; and his subsequent acquaintance 
with Charles Matthews, the unparalleled comedian, only served to in- 
crease his estimation of the capabilities and influence of histrionic 
talents, when displayed by the master-workings of such consummate 
actors. Concurring circumstances may also have contributed to tiie 
genial associations which lie cherished for the drama at this particular 
period of his life. He had been a student of men and books ; it was 
now that he assumed the responsibilities of an author. His " Spy," 
published in 1821, promised liim a wide reputation: Kean had reached 
our shores the year before, and Matthews was in our midst in 1822. A 
friend of Mr. Cooper, Charles P. Clinch, had just dramatized with great 
success the Spy, for the Park Theatre; and "the run" it enjoyed for 
many, many nights, could not fail to add to the immense popularity 
Mr. Cooper was now daily receiving by his new vocation as author. 

Mr. Cooper now became indoctrinated into the mysteries of the green- 
room, and not unfrequently gave relief to the more sober contemplations 
of the closet by casting a glance at the machinery of the mimic worJd 
and its prominent operators. During a memorable excursion which I 
made to Albany with Dunlap, Matthews, and Mr. Cooper, in the spring 
of 1823, I found him abounding in dramatic anecdote as well as in the 
more elevated associations whicli the striking scenery of the Hudson 



100 THE MEMORY OF COOPER. 

brought to mind. Col. Williams's theory of the formation of that noble 
river from the inland lakes, the Palisades, Fort Putnam, Andre and 
Arnold, were also among the topics of discourse. The novel of the Spy 
was, however, the leading subject of Matthews's conversation, and I have 
not yet forgotten that on that occasion Cooper unfolded, to Matthews in 
particular, his intention of writing a series of works illustrative of the 
physical aspect of his native country, of revolutionary occurrences, and 
of the red man of the western world. Matthews expressed in strong 
terms the patriotic benefits of such an undertaking, and complimented 
Mr. Cooper on the specimen which he had already furnished in the 
delineation of Harvey Birch. The approbation of Matthews could never, 
by any one who knew him well, be slightly appreciated. There was 
little of the flatterer in him at any time ; he was a sort of " My Lord 
Lofty," who valued himself in pride of opinion, and was not backward 
in his appreciation of his own judgment. He was an actor, it is true, 
but Garrick and Cooke were also : that he sought with devotion the 
companionship of authors is elucidated throughout his late Memoirs, 
recently published by his wife. He told Dunlap of the great satisfac- 
tion he had in the reading of his life of old George Frederick, but it was 
obvious he recognized a much higher candidate for literary renown in 
the person of Cooper. As I saw much of Matthews, from the hour of 
his first coming up the glorious Bay of New York, during the horrors of 
yellow fever in the fall of 1822, until his return to his native country, 
I feel authorized to dwell a little on his temperament. He possessed a 
strangely organized nervous system, susceptible to the feeblest impres- 
sions, whether of praise or censure, attention or neglect, indifference or 
regard. Though his life may be said to have been passed amidst the 
glare of multitudinous assemblies, whose approbation, decided and em- 
phatic, was indispensable to the free manifestation of his genius, yet the 
sensibilities of his nature found no condition so congenial to his happi- 
ness and composure as retirement within himself, aloof from the haunts 
of men, the city's noise, and the bustle of occupation. Hence it was not 
an unfrequent event with him, after the night's rapturous applause at 
the Park, on leaving the theatre to proceed forthwith across the river to 
Hoboken, and, accompanied perhaps by a friend, stroll through the 
woods of that then enchanting spot, once hallowed by the perambula- 
tions of the arborist, Micheaux, and Wilson, the ornithologist, seek repose 
in some common farm-house for the residue of the night, repair to the city 
in the morning, and be again ready for the night's entertainment. I have 
sometimes, with the faithful Simpson, joined him on these occasions ; the 
roar of the waters of the Hudson near his feet, the whistling of the winds 



REMINISCENCES OF COOPER. 101 

through the beautiful chestnut and plane-trees round about him, yielded 
harmony to his agitated mind, and exerted a recreative power on his over- 
wrought frame. No theriac would so effectually reach his constitutional 
malady as excursions such as I have tluis alluded to. If occasionally the 
victim to so sad a dejection of spirits, he was at other times the life and 
soul of joyous communion, and the source of the most palatable mental 
relish ; sound criticism on the older dramatists, and even English litera- 
ture at large; Walter Scott and the Byronic age of poetry — these and 
kindred subjects were among the topics of the discursive materials of his 
conversation. Such an individu.il, of whom it was aptly said he was 
Proteus for shape and mocking-bird for tongue, could not but enlist the 
feelings of Mr. Cooper ; and the friendship which they contracted for 
each other was never, I believe, interrupted during the entire perioil 
that Matthews remained in our countr3^ Indeed, I hardly know whether 
I have ever seen Mr. Cooper manifest so much enthusiasm in conversa- 
tion with any other person as with Mr. Matthews, when the occasion was 
felicitous, the subject-matter of interest, and the comedian in his happy 
vein. 

I cannot assert whether Mr. Cooper found in music a solace for care 
and a cordial for spirits fatigued by mental toil. His attendance on the 
Italian music of the Garcia troupe would lead me to an affirmative con- 
clusion. From his habits of observation, and his universality of attain- 
ment, I think that, in common with others of a poetic feeling, he must 
have been led by natural and strong provocatives to admire the sublime 
strains of Mozart and Rossini, when poured forth by that peerless artist, 
Malibran. Moreover, I feel as if it demanded a greater anatomist than 
I am to pronounce, that a poet of nature like Cooper, with his love of 
elegant literature, and his admiration of the works of the sculptor 
Greenough, could be constitutionally made up in proper proportions 
without something of the organization of Apollo. The marble bust 
of Mr. Cooper, executed by David of D'Avers, about 1829, now in the 
possession of the family of the late Charles Wilkes, of New York, his 
early friend, is a specimen of artistic development not unfavourable 
to the existence of this special quality in this distinguished char- 
acter. I have but few circumstances to enable me fully to record how, 
as a youtliful author, he bore the casual criticisms whicii appeared 
touching his early writings. As commendation was, however, their 
usual cliaracteristic, they could not but encourage his best efforts. An 
exception to tiiis general approval of his works appeared in a New York 
weekly journal, called The Minerva: it was edited by an English radical, 
who had recently arrived among us, the verv season in which the Pio- 



102 THE M E M O U y OF C O O P E li . 

neers was issued. Tlie anonymous reviewer saw fit to affirm tliat tin- 
pages of Cooper liad an immoral tendency, and the feelings of the yet 
inexperienced author gave utterance to vehement anathemas as lie read 
tliis foul aspersion. When, however, he had learned that the concealed 
critic was one of those who had left liis country for his country's good, 
and that by his infidel and blaspliemous writings he had incurred the 
penalty of the laws of his native lantl, and had only escaped the Old 
Bailey by flight, he wisely concluded that censure from such a quarter 
was actually praise in disguise. 

How strongly is impressed upon my memory his personal appear- 
ance, so often witnessed during his rambles in Broadway, and amidst 
the haunts of this busy population. His phrenological development 
might challenge comparison with tliat of the most favoured of mortals. 
His manly figure, high, prominent brow, clear and fine gray eye, and 
royal bearing, revealed the man of will and intelligence. His intellec- 
tual hardihood was remarkable. He worked upon a novel with the 
patient industry of a man of business, and set down every fact of cos- 
tume, action, expression, local feature, and detail of maritime opera- 
tions or woodland experience, with a kind of consciousness and precision 
that produced a Flemish exactitude of detail, while in pourtraying action 
he seemed to catch, by virtue of an eagle glance and an liei'oic temper- 
ament, the very spirit of his occasion, and convey it to the readers 
nerves and heart, as well as to bis understanding. Herein Mr. Cooper 
was a man of unquestionable originality. As to his literary services, 
some idea may be formed of the consideration in which they are held 
by the almost countless editions of many of his works in his own 
country, and their circulation abroad by translations into almost every 
living tongue. 

1 may add a word or two on the extent of his sympathies witli 
humanity. What a love he cherished for superior talents in every en- 
nobling pursuit in life — how deep an interest he felt in the fortunes of 
bis scientific and literary friends — what gratification he enjoyed in the 
physical inquiries of Dekay and Le Conte, the muse of Halleck and of 
Bryant, the painting of Cole, the sculpture of Greenough! Dunlap, 
were he speaking, might tell you of his gratuities to the unfortunate 
playwright and the dramatic performer. Witli the mere accumulators 
of money — those golden calves, whose hearts are as devoid of emotion 
as their brains of the faculty of cogitation — he held no congenial com- 
munion at any time : they could not participate in the fruition of his 
pastime ; and he felt in himself an innate superiority in the gifts with 
wliich nature had endowed him. He was ever vigilant, a keen ob- 



REMINISCENCES OF COOPEK. 103 

server of men and things, and in conversation frank and emphatic. It 
was a gratifying spectacle to encounter him with old Col. Trumbull, the 
historical painter, descanting on the many excellencies of Cole's pencil, 
in the delineation of American forest-scenery— a theme the richest in 
the world for Mr. Cooper's contemplation. A Shylock with his money- 
bags never glutted over his possessions with a happier feeling than did 
tliese two eminent individuals— the venerable Colonel with his patrician 
dignity, and Cooper with his somewhat aristocratic bearing, yet demo- 
cratic sentiment ; the one fruitful with the glories of the past, the other 
big with the stirring events of his country's progress, in the refinement 
of arts, and national power. Trumbull was one of the many old men 
I knew who delighted in Cooper's writings, and who in conversation 
dwelt upon his captivating genius. 

To his future biographer, Mr. Cooper has left the pleasing duty 
rightly to estimate the breadth and depth of his powerful intellect — 
psychologically to investigate the development and functions of that 
cerebral organ, which for so many years, with such rapid succession and 
variety, poured out the creations of poetic thought and descriptive 
illustration — to determine the value of his capacious mind by the influ- 
ence which, in the dawn of American literature, it has exercised, in 
rearing the intellectual fabric of his country's greatness— and to unfold 
the secret springs of those disinterested acts of charity to the poor and 
needy, which signalized his conduct as a professor of religious truth, 
and a true exemplar of the Christian graces. He has unquestionably 
done more to make known to the transatlantic world his country, her 
scenery, her characteristics, her aboriginal inhabitants, her history, than 
all preceding writers. His death may well be pronounced a national 
calamity. By common consent he long occupied an enviable place — the 
highest rank in American literature. To adopt the quaint phraseology 
of old Thomas Fuller, the felling of so mighty an oak must needs cause 
the increase of much underwood. Who will fill the void occasioned 
by his too early departure from among us, time alone must determine. 
With much consideration, I remain, 

Dear sir, yours most truly, 

JOHN W. FRANCIS. 

Rev. Rufus W. Griswolp. 



COOPER MONUMENT ASSOCIATION. 



105 



At a meeting of friends of the late FENmoKE Coopek, held at the Aster 
House on Thursday evening, March 25, 1852, Mr. WASHrNoxoN Irving in 
the chair, on motion of Mr. Gulian C. Vehplanck, seconded by Dr. J. M. 
Wainwkight, the following gentlemen were constituted the 

Caopcr |!l0itumtnt glssatiittian. 

President, 
WASHINGTON lEVING. 

Secretaries, 
RUFUS W. GEISWOLD AND FITZ-GEEENE HALLECK. 

Treasurer, 
JOHN A. STEVENS, 

President of tkf Bank of Commercit 



GULIAN C. VERPLANCK, 
JOHN DUER, 
JAMES K. PAULDING, 
JOHN W. FRANCIS, 
RICHARD B. KIMBALL, 
FRANCIS L. HAWKS, 
WILLIAM C. BRYANT, 
WILLIAM W. CAMPBELL, 
CHARLES KING, 
GEORGE BANCROFT, 



LEWIS GAYLORD CLARK, 
JOHN A. DIX. 
GEORGE P. MORRIS, 
SAMUEL OSGOOD, 
CHARLES ANTHON, 
MAUNSELL B. FIELD, 
JONA. M. WAINWRIGHT, 
DONALD G. MITCHELL, 
J. G. COGSWELL, 
R. STARBUCK MAYO. 



The Cooper Monument Fund now amounts to one thousand dollars, 
and the Committee appeal to the lovers of literature and of our national 
character throughout the Union, to contribute for the increase of this fund 
in such sums as they may deem proper, from one dollar and upwards, 
imtil a sum is in the hands of the treasurer suflBcient to defray the cost of 



I0(i T ri E MEiMORY OF COOPER. 

a colossal statue of our groat novelist, to be set up in one of the public 
squares in the city of New York. Subscriptions may be sent by mail to 
Washington Irving, President of the Association, Dearman Post Office, 
Westchester County, New York; to John A. Stevens, Treasurer of the 
Association, Bank of Commerce, New York, or to any member of the 
Association, in New York. And the following gentlemen are specially 
authorized to receive subscriptions. 

New Tori; George P. Putnam. 
Boston, TicKxoR, Eeed & Fields. 
Albany, Weare C. Little. 
Pliiladeljjhia, A. Hart, and A. McMakin. 
Baltimore, Jaues S. Waters. 
Charleston, John Russell. 
New Orhans, B. M. Norman. 
Cincinnati, H. W. Derby & Co. 
Buffalo, Phinney & Co. 



